A Little Respect, Please

He moved to Hollywood to become a rock star, but his looks derailed him. He landed on the series ""21 Jump Street'' and fled after three seasons. ""The company was pushing out this assembly-line image,'' he says. ""Boom, there's Johnny Depp! Boom, this is Johnny Depp! It scared me to death.'' What Depp wanted most was not to be Johnny Depp. So he hooked up with directors like Tim Burton, Emir Kusturica and Jim Jarmusch, and turned himself into a bunch of people he could be proud of.

That's what drives him. ""I just don't want to look back in 30 or 40 or 50 years,'' he says, ""and have my grandkids say, "You did a lot of stupid s--t, Granddad. What an idiot you were, smiling for the cameras and playing the game'.'' That's the audience he plays to: a very sharp, imaginary one, always watching inside his head.

© 1997