The Many Faces of Johnny Depp

In 1983, high-school dropout Johnny Depp and his rock band The Kids moved from Florida to Los Angeles to make it big. But after the band found little success, Depp stumbled into a career in acting practically by accident when, in his first-ever audition, he secured a leading role in A Nightmare on Elm Street.

From there, he became known as a teenage heartthrob in 21 Jump Street and then an idiosyncratic Tim Burton collaborator in Edward Scissorhands and seven other Burton films, along with an astonishing array of other movies. But after the mega-blockbuster success of Pirates of the Caribbean in 2003, the Jack Sparrow actor was transformed overnight into, in the words of his former agent, the “biggest movie star in the world.” Pirates came at a steep cost—so much money and so much fame, and so very fast.

Seemingly unconcerned with carefully choreographing a public image, Depp has become one of the last true renegades, mixing his internal and external chaos with his art. In recent years, that chaos has often taken center stage, with his divorce from Amber Heard and defamation suit against her, a livestreamed court battle that generated worldwide headlines and rallied millions behind #JusticeForJohnnyDepp. He was awarded $10 million in damages but emerged, in his words, “shunned, dumped, booted, deep-sixed, canceled—however you want to define it.”

Now, he’s making a comeback with at least two forthcoming films, though Depp himself rejects that word (“I didn’t go anywhere”). With insights from almost a hundred individuals who have known Depp in his former and present lives, this biography traces the timing, talent, trauma, and sheer luck that transformed a rock-and-roll kid from Florida into one of the most famous—and arguably the most controversial—actors on the planet.