"He strikes you as a very gentle soul:" the Times Online profiles Johnny Depp~~

Martyn Palmer wrote a lengthy profile of Johnny Depp for the Times, called “Johnny Be Good.” The headline reads, “The unflinching glare of the limelight once drove Johnny Depp to the edge. Now, as he steps into his latest role as Peter Pan’s creator, he’s discovered his own Neverland–at home.” Although the profile devotes half its space to rehashing very old news about Johnny’s past, it does have some fresh insights about Johnny today that make it well worth reading. For example, Palmer writes, “If you talk to the people who work with Depp–like Marc Forster, the director of FINDING NEVERLAND, Kate Winslet, others on the small-budget British movie THE LIBERTINE in which he plays the mad, bad Earl of Rochester–they will all say the same thing. Depp is quiet, kind and funny. And he hates being a movie star.[. . .] He strikes you as a very gentle soul.”

Once again in this interview, Johnny pinpoints the moment his life changed as the moment he met Vanessa Paradis: “More than anything, the thing that gave me real clarity was meeting Vanessa,” he tells Palmer. “Someone asked me the other day, ‘Where’s your Neverland?’ Well, I got it. I got my everything. My girl, my kids, my family. Pure happiness. I’ve arrived there and I’m blessed in that sense.”

The Zone thanks DeepinDepp for posting the Times interview on the News & Views board. You can read the full interview here, but beware of spoilers for FINDING NEVERLAND. Johnny speaks eloquently of his admiration for J. M. Barrie and his desire to refute the “rumour and hearsay” besmirching the playwright’s reputation. “I thought, considering what he gave to the world, he deserved more. And if there was any way I could brush off some of the dirt, then I would do it. I mean, here’s a guy who left the proceeds from the play and the book to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London. I think he was a great man.”

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