The
Johnny Depp Zone
Interview
Archive
2 0 0 6
Depp Thoughts
by Barbara O’Dair
photo by Albert Watson
Rolling Stone
Issue 1000
May 18, 2006
Johnny Depp works on no one’s clock but his own.
“This
cover story was months in the
making,” says Erik Hedegaard, who wrote the story in which
Depp discussed love,
rage, and Willy Wonka. “Maybe once a week we’d get
a call that Depp would see
me now. 
I
would begin packing my bags. I was going to Paris.
I was going to New York. I
was going to L.A.
I was going lots of places that, an hour
or two later, I learned that I wasn’t going after
all.” Still Hedegaard adds, “This
behavior is so much a part of the glory of Depp that’s
it’s hard to fault him
for it.” Rolling Stone film editor Peter Travers concurs:
“He’s somebody who
disappears into the ozone and you don’t know where he is, and
then, at the last
minute, he just shows up. Around the time of Fear
and Loathing in Las Vegas, he stopped by the office. He just
sat on the floor talking in his usual very quiet charming way, and it
was like
he had all the time in the world.”
Albert Watson shot Depp for the [Feb. 10, 2005] cover in Los Angeles, after he received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his role in Finding Neverland. He didn’t want a hairstylist or a makeup artist. Depp walked in the studio, chose a shirt and was ready to go. “He’s devilishly good looking,” says Watson. “He just comes in. He’s himself. He had a cowboy hat on, and he’s easygoing. It didn’t matter what he was wearing.
“Depp is a great beauty. He does everything he can to break that beauty down a little bit. But everything he does just makes him more interesting-looking.”
For
the story, Hedegaard was supposed to
meet Depp at the Dorchester Hotel in London.
“I’m standing around,” Hededgaard says.
“No Depp. Finally, his assistant swings
in the door to tell me that Depp had heard that the Dorchester
was crawling with paparazzi today and would I join him elsewhere?
Fifteen
minutes later, I walked into the bar at Claridge’s, and there
he was, in his
spread-collar shirt, with his hair swept back, looking infinitely
relaxed, with
his hand curved around a bottle of red wine. ‘I took the
liberty of ordering
this for us,’ he said. He began pouring and lit up a smoke,
and after that it
really did seem like he had all the time in the world.”
Albert Watson
“A Good, Strong Cover has some sort of intrinsic weight and power,” says Watson. “You’re dealing with people who are at the height of their celebrity. I think that’s an important thing.” Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the photographer has shot thirty-nine covers in three decades for ROLLING STONE, from a snow-covered Jack Nicholson in 1981 to an earnest Jay-Z in 2005, both of which are among the six Watson covers that appear in this issue.