John Christopher
Depp II who is popularly known as Johnny Depp is a very famous American actor, producer,
and musician.
He has won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet
Street (2007) while he was nominated for ten Golden Globe Awards.
He has also been nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor thrice, among other honours.
Johnny Depp was born on June 9, 1963, in Owensboro, Kentucky to Betty Sue Palmer, a waitress and
John Christopher Depp, an engineer.
He is the youngest of four siblings.
During his childhood, his family moved frequently.
They eventually settled in Miramar, Florida.
His mother gifted him a guitar at the age of 12 which led Depp to play in various bands.
He eventually dropped out of high school with a passion for becoming a rock musician.
His band The Kids relocated to Los Angeles but they did not remain together for long.
Depp started to think about an acting career when actor Nicolas Cage, whom Depp met through
his first wife, advised him to pursue a career in acting.
Depp’s debut was with the role in the 1984 horror film "A Nightmare on Elm Street.".
He continued working for a few other projects before he landed his breakout role in "21
Jump Street," which was a television series aired on FoxTV where he was paid around $45,000
per episode.
Depp gained recognition in the industry after “21 Jump Street”.
He appeared in Tim Burton's film "Edward Scissorhands" as the title character in 1990.
The role was a critical and commercial success.
He was established as a leading Hollywood actor after this.
Not only that, but this film also began his long relationship with Burton.
Some of Depp's projects include "What's Eating Gilbert Grape", "Benny and Joon", "Don Juan
DeMarco", “Sleepy Hollow", "Donnie Brasco", and "Chocolat" throughout the 1990s.
However, one of his greatest roles for which he gained popularity and recognition was for
his performance in the "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" by Walt Disney
Pictures in the year 2003 in the character of Captain Jack Sparrow.
He appeared as the pirate in all the four sequels of the franchise.
He starred as Willy Wonka in "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" after reuniting with
Tim Barton.
He also voiced the character, Victor Van Dort, in the animated film "Corpse Bride" (2005).
Depp bagged the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in Motion Picture Musical or Comedy
for his role in "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street '' (2007), also directed by
Burton.
He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for this role as well which was
his third nomination.
He also starred in "Alice in Wonderland" and "Dark Shadows", all directed by Burton.
He has also appeared in other films namely "Murder on the Orient Express", “Fantastic
Beasts and Where to Find Them" and "Richard Says Goodbye".
Fun Fact: A little girl once wrote a letter to Depp insisting he help her organize a mutiny
against her teacher.
So, he showed up at her school in the “Pirates Costume” and managed to convince them to
reconsider the mutiny.
Depp established Infinitum Nihil which is his own production company in 2004.
He is serving as the founder and CEO while his sister Christi Dembrowski is serving as
the president.
Depp is also an accomplished musician as that is what he did for most of his early life.
Along with Joe Perry and Alice Cooper, he formed the group Hollywood Vampires in 2015.
They released their self-titled debut studio album in September 2015.
The album features three original songs which were all co-written by Depp.
"Rise", which was their second studio album, was released in June 2019.
In 2020, a cover of John Lennon’s "Isolation" was released by Depp with guitarist Jeff Beck.
He also stated that they would continue working together and releasing more music in the future.
In the 1990s, Depp began to gain attention being a new type of male film star who actively
rejected the norms of that role.
He publicly protested against his image after becoming a teen idol in “21 Jump Street”.
With this, his subsequent film and PR choices began to attain new heights and create a new
persona.
Film scholar Anna Everett described his roles in films and persona as “gender-binding”
and "anti-macho".
This was very far away from the conventions of a Hollywood leading man.
According to Tracey Jacobs of the United Talent Agency (UTA), Depp's agent had to take up
a lot of criticisms of his role choices.
The higher-ups at the UTA were characterized by Depp as thinking about when he is going
to kiss a girl or pull out a gun, which was a pretty masculine trait in Hollywood at that
time.
Depp also cultivated the image of a bad boy which was ascribed to Depp's personal life
throughout the decade.
In 2003, the same year as the first film in the Pirates series was released, People named
him as the "World's Sexiest Man".
He received the title again in 2009.
He was one of the biggest and most popular film stars throughout the 2000s and well into
the 2010s in the world.
Between 2005-12, he was voted as the Favorite Male Movie Star at the People's Choice Awards
every year.
In the 2010s, Depp's films have been very less successful, with many big-budget studio
films such as The Lone Ranger, Dark Shadows, and Alice Through the Looking Glass underperforming
at the box office.
Depp received negative publicity due to accusations of substance abuse, domestic violence, and
poor on-set behaviour besides the loss of his US$650 million fortune.
Disney ended their collaboration with Depp after having extensively collaborated in 2003–2017.
Depp was asked to resign from Warner Bros.' Fantastic Beasts franchise after he lost the
highly publicized libel trial against the publishers of The Sun.
Depp married Lori Allison in 1983 and divorced her 2 years later.
Subsequently in the 1990s, he got engaged to actresses Jennifer Grey and Sherilyn Fenn
but broke up sooner.
In 1990, he proposed to his co-star Winona Ryder in "Edward Scissorhands”.
He dated model Kate Moss between 1994 to 1998.
He began a relationship with Vanessa Paradis who is a French actress and singer in 1998.
Both of them met when Depp was in France shooting his film "The Ninth Gate".
They have two children together.
He divorced Paradis in 2012 and began a relationship with actress Amber Heard.
Both of them met on the set of "The Rum Diary" in the previous year.
They married in February 2015.
Heard filed for divorce in May 2016 and accused Depp of verbally and physically abusing her.
Their divorce was finalized in January 2017 and Heard was paid a settlement
of $7 million.
Depp's finances were managed by The Management Group, a company for the majority of his career.
In 2017, he filed a lawsuit against them alleging mismanagement and fraud.
He accused them of causing him a loss of tens of millions of dollars, failing to file his
property taxes on time, racking up more than $40 million in debt without his knowledge,
making unauthorized loans, and overpaying for security and other services, amongst other
charges.
The Management Group counter-sued him and claimed that Depp had been paid $650 million
in the last 13 years.
However, his lavish spending habits meant he no longer had enough money to cover his
basic monthly expenses, which went around $2 million per month.
They claimed that Depp overspent recklessly and put himself in that position.
Depp spends a massive amount of money like $150,000 per month on bodyguards, $3.6 million
per year to maintain a 40-person full-time staff, $200,000 per month on private jet travel
and $30,000 per month on wine.
He purchased 14 homes around the world including a horse farm in Kentucky, a 45-acre chateau
in France, and several islands in the Bahamas and spent around $75 million.
His entire property is worth $100 million if he wanted to sell it.
He owns several yachts, more than 45 cars, an art collection and 12 storage facilities.
Depp still retains his position as one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood.
He demands $20 million upfront per movie and 20% of the backend.
That deal has made him earn more than $300 million from the Pirates of the Caribbean
franchise alone.
He also made around $55 million in backend earnings from the "Alice in Wonderland”
franchise.
To date Johnny has a net worth of about $200 million.
Not too shabby considering the financial woes he has gone through.
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