Johnny+Depp

= = = Johnny Depp =

Biography
Internationally acclaimed, rich and famous, successful and highly admired – all these would have been easy for someone to fall prey to the pressures of an elite social life. But this is not the case with Johnny Depp. He’s established himself as one of the most successful people in Hollywood, but what is curious about Depp is his personality, his outlook on success and his emphasis on family, unlike those of his fellow peers.

John Christopher Depp was born into a working class family in Owensboro, Kentucky, and throughout most of his younger years, his family had moved from place to place - a reported 20 homes - before finally settling down in Florida in 1970. His parents divorced a few years later, causing him to turn to inflict self-bodily harm for a while. He dropped out of school when he was 15, and returned to school a couple of weeks later, asking to return. The principal turns him away and tells him to focus on his music career. (His mother had given him a guitar when he was twelve, and he self-taught himself how to play with a stolen chord book.) Depp had played mostly at several nightclubs with several garage bands, before deciding to move to California to pursue a record deal. There, he met with Nicolas Cage, who encouraged him to talk to his agent about acting. Dirt-broke, he agreed, never thinking that it would one day develop into a career. At the time, music was his priority, and he was married to one of his band members’ sister Lori Anne Allison.

His success on the Fox TV television series, //21 Jump Street//, portrayed Depp as a popular teen idol. However, despite the success of the series, Depp felt uncomfortable being seen as a “product” and vowed to only play on films that he felt were right for him. His career as an actor boomed, and Depp found himself accepting roles that were of a darker, emotional nature. From characters like Edward Scissorhands (//Edward Scissorhands//), Captain Jack Sparrow (//Pirates of the Caribbean// Trilogy), Ichabod Crane (//Sleepy Hollow//), and Sweeney Todd (//Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street//), Depp had specifically chosen films that he found rather interesting, rather than the movie’s potential to become a blockbuster hit. Depp also absolutely refuses to watch the films he’s played a role in, preferring directors and producers to manage it, and has said once, that once his work was done, he was out. He wanted nothing more to do with it other than his take on the character and how he was going to portray it. He has filmed several movies with Tim Burton, with whom he developed a strong relationship, as where others weakened.

Depp’s marriage to Allison fell apart, and the couple divorced. He then dated several women, including Winona Ryder and Kate Moss, as his career skyrocketed, before finally settling down in 1998 with his current longtime girlfriend, Vanessa Paradis. Paradis, a French model and very talented singer, gave birth to two children, a daughter Lily Rose, and a son, Jack. Depp enjoys nothing more than spending time with his own kids and Paradis and does so whenever he can. “//Family is the most important thing in the world for many, many reasons, foundation; it’s your root. It’s the only unconditional love that you can ever get in your whole life//” (John at an interview in //Inside the Actors Studio//). Depp and Paradis mostly live in France, where he enjoys the anonymity from the public and the simpler life there. The couple avoids making regular appearances out to the public, and only do so on rare occasions.

The Humanistic and Existential Approach focuses on the individual’s values, personal worth, on the meaning of life, and what it means to overcome personal tragedies. Really quite an optimistic approach, the individual is encouraged to realize their inner potentials through introspection and to take steps to reach self-actualization. Here, a particular aspect of Johnny Depp’s personality is examined. As a child, Depp has had a lot of personal difficulties (divorce of his parents, the constant moving from place to place), which he has managed to overcome in his adult years. But before then, during this dark period of Johnny’s life, he’s succumbed to bodily self-infliction, vandalism, drugs, dropping out of school, and somewhere along the way, he lost himself – experimenting with all that life had to offer him (albeit not the most moral path) but searching for meaning in his life and where he belonged. He left Florida for California, in pursuit of dreams of becoming a rock musician. Although this was not achieved, he had found another niche through acting, and his exposure to the image of a teen idol for some years had deterred him. It was not something that he wanted. It was not how he saw himself, and his vow to remove himself from that position is an indication of his realization to be whom he wanted to be.

His personal choice to only act in films he felt akin to, to play the serious, somewhat fallen hero that society misunderstood, was something he empathized. Such characters he played, was a personal choice that reminded him of what it means to be human, to be flawed, and even with success and all the fame that one could possibly want, all of these would mean nothing without human companionship, without love, without family. When he met the love of his life and she had given birth to his kids, he said that it was //“//destiny; kismet”, “a part of the wonderful ride he was on”. Knowing he still has other issues to face, he treats them with a positive outlook, never bothering to concern himself with the details, unless it pertained to a member of his family or a close friend. He is happy with who he is, and thus, Depp has reached self-actualization. This is reflected in the choices he’s made on behalf of himself and his own family, such as keeping and maintaining a low-key profile, and choosing the roles in movies he felt was right. Depp does not strive for more, and he is humble about the opportunities he has received, and the blessings he’s come to known. He has found his meaning for existence.

Perspective 2 - Person-Situation Interactionist Approach
The person-situation interactionist approach defines personality to be varying across people in different situations. According to Harry Stack Sullivan, personality is but a pattern of interpersonal interactions, and he denied the existence of a single, fixed personality (a.k.a. illusion of individuality). This is very applicable to Johnny Depp’s character. Because he had a childhood history of moving from one place to another, it is very likely that Depp’s personality differentiated across each town they moved in.

// “We moved like gypsies. From the time I was five until my teens we lived in 30 or 40 different houses. That probably has a lot to do with my transient life now. But it's how I was raised so I thought there was nothing abnormal about it. Wherever the family is, that's home. We lived in apartments, on a farm, in a motel.” //

Each new place he moved into, he understood that in order to be acknowledged by society, he had to conform to whatever culture was appropriate. This form of adaptability to his environment, developed at such a young age, allowed him to take on different characters, owing to his future success as an actor. Because he is such a famous actor, it is not difficult to observe what his behavior was like when he was a teenager – rebellious and uncouth. //“I hung around with bad crowds. We used to break and enter places. We'd break into the school and destroy a room or something. I used to steal things from stores. I started smoking at 12, lost my virginity at 13 and did every kind of drug there was by 14. Pretty much any drug you can name, I've done it.”// Today, nearing 47, he comes off well mannered, genuine, and caring. This was due to the onset of becoming a father several years ago, and his want and need for privacy to protect his children from exploitation. //“Having kids was a huge change for me. Becoming a father. But I think more than changing, I feel like I've been revealed to myself, I kind of found out who I was. When you meet your child for the first time and you're looking at this angel, you start realizing what an idiot you've been for so many years and how much time you've wasted.”//

Johnny’s take on life was in part from his own active, conscious efforts for consistency. He chose whom he wanted to spend his time with, and what character roles he wanted to play, and the people in his life has been pretty consistent in his later years. He derives inspiration from others, creating this one-of-a-kind character that he projects onscreen. It seems like he has not one identity, but several, and that is ultimately due to his social interactions.

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Theorists of the Interactionist approach, to some extent, proclaim that human behavior is unpredictable. In the case of such an actor, especially for someone as talented as Johnny Depp, personality becomes “the actor’s responsibility to change every time – not only for himself and the people he’s working with, but for the audience”. Depp even says that with any part he plays, he admits that he puts a certain amount of himself in it. When it comes to completing tasks, Depp is rather field-independent. This was evident in terms of his choice to choose who his character is and what his character will be like. In response to different environments, Depp takes on the role from what society expects of him as a father, as an actor, as a boyfriend, and a son. Thus, from such an interactionist approach is Depp’s character dependent on his past experiences and his relationship between himself and the environment, his internal drives, motives, and traits. ======

Johnny Depp has been known to be one of the most versatile and successful actors of Hollywood. Because of such a humble upbringing and an exposure to some of the worst situations one can ever encounter, Depp has been able to adapt easily to social situations. He has evolved to become this humanistic individual who has not forgotten where he came from, and with whom he was associated with before becoming famous. Strong relationships with family and friends have contributed to his success as an individual, and to witness how far he’s come along is an inspiration to many. He has long been one of my favorite actors, because of his affinity for film roles that dealt with an innocent turned tortured soul. From time to time, certain things in his life may remind him of the past, and although, sometimes, it may not all be too pleasant, it doesn’t deter him from sharing a happy life with those he loves.