Johnny Depp

I suppose the only thing at 50 you can really start to look forward to is just total irresponsibility. As you get older, you can just sit in a chair, wear anything you want, you know you can walk down; old people dress cool. You know they wear sweatpants. The elderly have it down.

The only creatures that are evolved enough to convey pure love are dogs and infants.

I am an American. I love my country and have great hopes for it. It is for this reason that I speak candidly and sometimes critically about it. I have benefited greatly from the freedom that exists in my country, and for this, I am eternally grateful.

When you're doing a movie, your body doesn't allow you to get sick until you finish.

I'll take photographs with kids. People who want to take photographs with me. People who like the movies. People who supported me. I'll do that all day, all night, that's fine. But the bombardment of the paparazzi is just... I truly don't understand. It just feels like this kind of gluttonous, horrific sport. It's like sport.

Am I a romantic? I've seen 'Wuthering Heights' ten times. I'm a romantic.

I'm always for the Indian in the cowboy movie. Always.

If you catch me saying 'I am a serious actor,' I beg you to slap me.

Trips to the dentist I like to postpone that kind of thing.

Just keep moving forward and don’t give a shit about what anybody thinks. Do what you have to do, for you.

I hate watching myself on screen. I can't stand it.

I'm not Blockbuster Boy.

Its all kind of these profound things crashing on you when your child arrives into the world. Its like youve met your reason to live.

I think the thing to do is enjoy the ride while you're on it.

My favorite color is black.

It's an odd thing when there is a fan page for my daughter who is not yet 13.

You grow up a bit damaged or broken then you have some success but you don't know how to feel good about the work you're doing or the life you're leading.

I've had the honor and the pleasure and gift of having known Elizabeth Taylor for a number of years. You know, you sit down with her, she slings hash, she sits there and cusses like a sailor, and she's hilarious.

I remember in that red leisure suit I sort of felt like a Pizza Hut employee, and the white one was the ultimate, with the white turtleneck collar, that was the ultimate in bad taste.

My body is a journal in a way. It's like what sailors used to do, where every tattoo meant something, a specific time in your life when you make a mark on yourself, whether you do it yourself with a knife or with a professional tattoo artist.

With Ed Wood, it was this sort of blending of Ronald Reagan, the Tin Man from 'The Wizard of Oz,' and Casey Kasem.

If you love two people at the same time, choose the second. Because if you really loved the first one, you wouldn't have fallen for the second.

I moved from Kentucky to Miramar, Florida, at about 8. I think I was in second grade. I still had my Southern accent, and down there, you got to experience a melting pot in full fury. All the kids I hung out with were, like, Sicilian kids from Jersey and New York.

When you're confined to a TV series, and you have to play one character, it can make you insane. But it didn't affect me. I got out in time.

I'm just an actor, and if I can leave something behind that my kids will be proud of, then that's what I want. I don't want my kids to be embarrassed by anything I've done.

I don't pretend to be captain weird. I just do what I do.

I started out as a guitarist in the early '80s.

Me, I'm dishonest, and you can always trust a dishonest man to be dishonest. Honestly, it's the honest ones you have to watch out for.

I'm an old-fashioned guy... I want to be an old man with a beer belly sitting on a porch, looking at a lake or something.

People cry, not because they’re weak. It’s because they’ve been strong for too long.

The quality of life is so different in France. There is the possibility of living a simple life. I would never contemplate raising my daughter in LA. I would never raise any child there.

I have a place that I get to go to in the Bahamas. It's the only place that guarantees total anonymity and freedom.

There are four questions of value in life... What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love.

I'm not sure I'm adult yet.

After I had done the first 'Pirates' movie and 'Secret Window,' I went on vacation to escape with my kiddies and my girl, and someone said that there was an island down the road for sale. I said, 'Oh well, let's go see it.' I looked at it, I walked on it, and I was done. It had to be.

I'm shy, paranoid, whatever word you want to use. I hate fame. I've done everything I can to avoid it.

I guess I'm attracted to these off beat roles because my life has been a bit abnormal. The only thing I have a problem with is being labeled.

If someone is being bullied or feels like an outsider, and they relate to something that I've done, even if it's just igniting a spark, that's great. I had that feeling as a kid. I was messed with no end.

Anything I've done up till May 27th 1999 was kind of an illusion, existing without living. My daughter, the birth of my daughter, gave me life.

On a film, you start to get closer and closer with the people you're working with, and it becomes like this circus act or this travelling family.

When my daughter was ill in Great Ormond Street, it was the darkest period of my life.

There are necessary evils. Money is an important thing in terms of representing freedom in our world. And now I have a daughter to think about. It's really the first time I've thought about the future and what it could be.

I always have a decompression period at the end of a film. Sometimes it joyful, because you're just happy to be done. Or it can be melancholy.

When you disrespect Australian law, they will tell your firmly. Declare everything when you enter Australia.

America is dumb. It's like a dumb puppy that has big teeth that can bite and hurt you - aggressive. My daughter is four; my boy is one. I'd like them to see America as a toy - a broken toy. Investigate it a little, check it out, get this feeling, and then get out.

Escapism is survival to me.

Simplicity - that's what I want. It's been a rare commodity for me for a number of years, but I enjoy being able to hang out with my girl, read the newspaper, and sit back and start to read a book by someone I admire, like Lawrence Krauss or Christopher Hitchens. And that's it - simplicity, where the game of Hollywood doesn't exist.

I'd rather fight a buzzsaw than dance.

I'm doing a film called 'Black Mass' where I play James Bulger. The reason to play him is obvious to me. He's a fascinating character. It's not like anything I've done before on that level. I'm very excited to slide into that skin for a little bit.

As a teenager I was so insecure. I was the type of guy that never fitted in because he never dared to choose. I was convinced I had absolutely no talent at all. For nothing. And that thought took away all my ambition too.

When I met people they said, 'You do look like a hobo, but you smell really good.'

When I can focus on something like guitar or painting, I do. I started painting people I admire, like Kerouac, Bob Dylan, Nelson Algren, Marlon Brando, Patti Smith, my girl, my kids.

Wes Craven was the guy who gave me my start, from my perspective, for almost no reason in particular.

I was the guy who had been bouncing around the film industry for years, and I'd been lucky if five or 10 people would see my movies, so Captain Jack did a big flip for my career.

Tomorrow it'll all be over, then I'll have to go back to selling pens again.

'Edward Scissorhands' was tough to let go of because I found real safety in allowing myself to be that open, that honest. To explore purity. It was a hard one to walk away from.

I always wanted to be a character actor rather than the poster boy that they tried to make me 100 years ago. An actor has a degree of responsibility to change for the audience, to give them something new each time, to surprise and not bore them.

When kids hit one year old, it's like hanging out with a miniature drunk. You have to hold onto them. They bump into things. They laugh and cry. They urinate. They vomit.

I don't go anywhere without a book by James Joyce called 'Finnegan's Wake.'

There's no truth anymore.

Throughout my lifetime Ive left pieces of my heart here and there. And now theres almost barely enough to stay alive. But I force a smile knowing that my ambition far exceeded my talent.

I like the challenge of trying different things and wondering whether it's going to work or whether I'm going to fall flat on my face.

With any part you play, there is a certain amount of yourself in it. There has to be, otherwise it's just not acting. It's lying.

I made odd noises as a child. Just did weird things, like turn off light switches twice. I think my parents thought I had Tourette's syndrome.

At my very core, I'm pretty shy. I just happen to have a weird job.

I think everybodys weird. We should all celebrate our individuality and not be embarrassed or ashamed of it.

How many chances to you get to make a musical about a serial killer? The minute Tim Burton approached me, I was in.

I did do a film that I refer to as 'The Unpronounceable' by a guy named Yvan Attal with Charlotte Gainsbourg. I had a bit part in there. That was quite fun, doing scenes in French.

I think everybody's weird. We should all celebrate our individuality and not be embarrassed or ashamed of it.

It's such a funny thing when you see your daughter transitioning from your baby, your little girl, to suddenly being a young woman. If you're not really looking for it, you can miss it, and Lily-Rose is on that road already, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.

I still approach a scene as one would approach a solo. There's nothing set or pat.

When I played Tonto in 'The Lone Ranger' and was playing the older Tonto, I would just leave the makeup on and go to sleep because it was a four or five hour job; it was, from the waist up, all over me.

What attracted me to Jimmy Bulger were the various facets of his personality and his humanity because I felt that the only way I could approach playing a character like him was to find his human side first and then map that out to see where it took the turn. He was a very complicated man.

I don't want to run around and look at a shot through a monitor. That doesn't improve what I'm trying to do. I figure, once I've done my job, it's none of my business.

Trying to make someone fall in love with you is about as pointless as trying to control who you fall in love with.

When I auditioned for '21 Jump Street,' it was a last minute thing. I had one of the worst flus that I've ever experienced in my life, and I was forced to go to the audition, the screen test.

There is nothing on earth that could ever make me want to relive certain years of my life when I was young.

She's kind of a walking poem, she's this perfect beauty...but at the same time very deep, very smart.

For me, it's always more difficult and slightly exposing to play something that's close to yourself. I always like to try to hide, just because I can't stand the way I look.

There's definitely healing properties to being in proximity to the ocean and that breeze. There's something about that Caribbean climate and humidity.

I have known plenty of people who, in their later years, had the energy of children and the kind of curiosity and fascination with things like little children. I think we can keep that, and I think it's important to keep that part of staying young. But I also think it's great fun growing old.

At 13, I was wearing plain t-shirts. Then I used to steal my mom's clothing. She had all these crushed-velvet shirts with French-cut sleeves. And, like, seersucker bell-bottoms.

You use your money to buy privacy because during most of your life you aren't allowed to be normal.

It's been insane. From Whitey Bulger to the Mad Hatter, you can imagine the schizophrenia.

I pretty much try to stay in a constant state of confusion just because of the expression it leaves on my face.

I marketed pens - on the phone. But the beauty of the gig was that you had to call these strangers and say, 'Hi, how ya doing?' You made up a name, like, 'Hey, it's Edward Quartermaine from California. You're eligible to receive this grandfather clock or a trip to Tahiti.' You promise them all these things if they buy a gross of pens.

I detest jokes - when somebody tells me one, I feel my IQ dropping; the brain cells start to disappear. But something is funny when the person delivering the line doesn't know it's funny or doesn't treat it as a joke. Maybe it comes from a place of truth, or it's a sort of rage against society.

Life's pretty good, and why wouldn't it be? I'm a pirate, after all.

I started out printing silk screen t-shirts. I sold ink pens. I worked construction. I worked at a gas station. I pumped gas. I was a mechanic for a little bit. I went into sewers, down into sewer lines. I had a lot of somewhat unpleasant gigs for a time there.

I do realise and understand very well on a profound level how lucky I am and what a privileged position it is and what it's done ultimately for me, my family and my kids. But at the same time, there are moments in a man's life when you just kind of want to feel somewhat normal.

It's very, very important to me, no matter who the person is, to play that person with the utmost degree of truth that I'm able to bring. But playing a character like Jack Sparrow or Willy Wonka, that requires nothing but a degree of responsibility to the intent of the story - responsibility to the film-maker to deliver the goods.

One of the most beautiful things in the world is seeing a mommy with her kids. There's nothing more beautiful, nothing more sublime.

It's good to experience Hollywood in short bursts, I guess. Little snippets. I don't think I can handle being here all the time, it's pretty nutty.

You do the work and you want people to see it; but, um while I'm doing the work, the result doesn't matter at all to me. Ultimately, I don't, I don't care whether the film is - you know - some big giant box-office bonanza and I don't care if its a complete flop. To me, when a film gets made and it's actually finished it's a success. They're all a success in their own way.

Lily's really together - she's a sharp kid and one of the smartest human beings I have ever met. Whatever she is doing, if she needs any advice, I'm there for her. Kids are going to make their own decisions, but I guess that the only thing you can do as a parent is to offer support. And I do.

Trips to the dentist - I like to postpone that kind of thing.

Everything is just very, very blurry. I've never had proper vision.

I think, as an actor, it is good to feel the fear of failing miserably. I think you should take that risk. Fear is a necessary ingredient in everything I do. But if I do 'Hamlet,' it will probably be in a small theater on a small stage, and it will have to be very, very soon because I'm getting a little long in the tooth for it.

I have this fear of clowns, so I think that if I surround myself with them, it will ward off all evil.

When I was 12, I wanted to learn how to play the guitar, and I found a chord book in a shop, and I stuffed it down my trousers. And that's how I learned to play the guitar.