Update on MY AMERICAN LOVER with Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis

Another film on Johnny Depp’s horizon is My American Lover, to be directed by Lasse Hallstrom, who previously directed Johnny in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Chocolat. The highly-anticipated project will pair Johnny (as the American novelist Nelson Algren) with Vanessa Paradis (playing Simone de Beauvoir). “Lasse has been e-mailing Vanessa and me,” Johnny told journalist Ruben Nepales of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. “We’ve been back and forth with various ideas, talking to the writers . . . . It will be something that we can hopefully try to do sometime next year.”

While Johnny and Vanessa have performed together as musicians, and he has directed four of her music videos, they have never acted together in a film. “The project interests us both but is also a bit scary,” Vanessa said in an interview in Paris-Match last December. “Finding myself face to face with him, having to act, lie in a way, still seems complicated to me. At the same time, it would allow us to spend time together while working, but I really don’t know whether I would be up to it.” She added, “I think that it would be a lot simpler for me to play his sister or his landlady or something like that. We didn’t go looking for a movie in which I would be his lover, the proposal came out of the blue and we liked the idea.”

The film’s locations would include Paris — of course — and Algren’s home town, Chicago, which Johnny learned to love during Public Enemies. “It would be really nice for us to be in the same spot for a good chunk of time, especially with the kiddies,” Johnny told Ruben Nepales. “Chicago and Paris are not bad locations. Also it will be great to tackle the subject matter and those characters, Simone de Beauvoir who was this very strong woman with a wonderful sense of humor, and Nelson Algren who was a writer and someone that I’ve always been fascinated with.”

The Zone thanks Marijose for the interview with Ruben Nepales, and FANtasticJD for the interview from Paris-Match. You can read the Nepales interview on the Zone’s News & Views forum, and the Paris-Match article on the Porch General Discussion forum.

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