Ragots de la presse

MIRROR.CO.UK
9 May 2012

'I don't want my kids to Google me and read lies and rumours':
Johnny Depp frets over the internet and the price of fame

The film star also admits he is particularly concerned for daughter Lily-Rose, who has her own fans raving about her online

TYPE the name “Johnny Depp” into the internet search engine Google and 113 million results are retrieved in the blink of an eye.

That mind-boggling total received an unexpected surge recently when he was reported to have broken up with Vanessa Paradis, his French lover of 14 years.

The film star – usually open about his off-screen life – is keeping schtum on the supposed split in case their kids Lily-Rose, 12, and Jack, 10, read about it oline.

He explains: “For a long time I tried to manage an honesty and openness about my personal life because I’m human and I’m normal – well, semi-normal.

“But now my kids have access to the internet and are able to read truth, lies, total fiction, rumours and this whole thing has become a mulch of fodder.

"So I’ve decided to stay hush-hush and, if the rumours spin, then let them spin.

“I have to sit my kids down and say, ‘Look, this is an occupational hazard for me and your mum. It’s out of our hands, so don’t go looking for it.’”

He also admits he is particularly concerned for Lily-Rose, who has her own fans raving about her online.

“It’s an odd thing when there is a fan page for my daughter who is not yet 13,” he says.

“This is a little girl who is quite sophisticated and beautiful and a lot of fun but she’s a little girl and a student.

“She just happens to be our kid and she certainly finds it weird. I find it bizarre and somewhat ugly.”

As Lily-Rose would discover from the briefest of internet searches, her dad has had a colourful past – with more than his fair share of bumpy rides.

But the former hellraiser reckons a terrifying accident on the set of his latest movie could have been his last.

When we meet in a Beverly Hills hotel, Johnny says: “I’m lucky to be here.”

He was filming horseback scenes for Lone Ranger – in which he plays Tonto – when he was thrown from his horse and dragged along the ground.

“I’ve done a number of films on horseback and I’ve taken a couple of spills but this was a violent one,” he grimaces.

“I had a good relationship with the horse, whose name is Scout, and when I look at the tape I can see that Scout saved my life.

"I went down badly and I was dragged for 25 yards and in the end the horse jumped over me and just clipped me with his back legs.”

Before Lone Ranger is released next year, Johnny can be seen from Friday in the £80million flick Dark Shadows.

Johnny plays 18th century playboy Barnabas Collins, who is turned into a vampire by a spurned woman.

After being buried for two centuries he is freed – and finds a very changed world.

It’s Johnny’s eighth film with director Tim Burton, a partnership that began with the unexpected hit Edward ­Scissorhands in 1990.

Like most of their movies, Dark Shadows was filmed mainly at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, sparking rumours of property searches in Hampshire.

But Johnny laughs: “I’ve been reported to have been buying houses all over the globe for years but I haven’t seen one of them.

"I don’t own a place in the UK but I would love to. Doing so many films in Britain over the years it would make sense to buy at some point.”

After starting out as a guitarist in a rock band in Florida, Johnny’s acting career started as a doomed boyfriend in 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Other small parts followed but his big breakthrough came when he was cast as an undercover cop in the TV series 21 Jump Street.

Overnight, he became a reluctant teen idol who was so uncomfortable with his star status he was once caught defacing his own image on a billboard.

Johnny trashed his trailer, caused trouble on the set and did everything he could to free himself from the show.

He recalls: “I tried to be fired because I felt I was in a prison creatively. I was stuck in a box. They created this image, this monster, and they were selling it to the world.”

When huge roles beckoned over the next few years, he turned them down: Lestat in Interview with the Vampire (it went to Tom Cruise), Jack in Speed (Keanu Reeves) and Tristan Ludlow in Legends Of The Fall (Brad Pitt).

His explanation? “I’m not Blockbuster Boy,” he states plainly. But that’s exactly what he’s become. Nowadays, he’s more surprised than anyone to find himself as a bankable A-list star.

“I was off the list for many years, then I was on for 20 minutes, then I was off, then I was back on but then the movie bombed so I was off again,” he laughs.

“I never knew where I was going to go. I never really thought about where any of it was going. I only knew that, regardless of success or failure, I always wanted to some day be able to look back and go, ‘I did all right. I’m proud of what I did. I didn’t sell out.’

"I’ve never felt particularly ambitious or driven, although I like to create stuff, whether it’s a little doodle, a drawing, a small painting or a movie or a piece of music, so I suppose I’m driven by that. Everything I’ve done has felt natural.”

He has earned best actor Oscar nominations for Finding Neverland, Sweeney Todd and Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. But he is not an actor who is worried if his films turn out to be box-office flops – and reveals that sometimes he doesn’t even bother watching them himself.

He says: “I’ve always held the belief it’s really none of my business. It really isn’t. I can only do what I can do.

“I’m an actor. I don’t even watch the things most of the time. Once they say ‘Wrap’, I’m on to the next character.

“People will say a movie bombed at the box office but I couldn’t care less.”

http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/johnny-depp-frets-over-internet-824638