Johnny Depp: The Playboy Interviews (50 Years of the Playboy Interview) Read Online Free PDF

was painting this other image he had of himself—the nice guy who played the clown.
    Playboy: Do you think he believed the nice-guy image?
    Depp: I think he did, but he was driven by his sickness. Anyway, I got rid of it. I paid more than Gacys were going for and naively believed the money went to the victims’ families, which wasn’t true. I gave the thing away. I didn’t want it around anymore.
    Playboy: What else gives you the creeps?
    Depp: I used to have a nightmare that I was being chased through bushes and fronds by the skipper from Gilligan’s Island . I don’t know what was on his mind, but it wasn’t good and I didn’t want anything to do with it. As a kid I was also afraid of John Davidson.
    Playboy: The TV crooner?
    Depp: Yeah. I’d see him on television when I was younger, and it was that thing that scared me—the smile that was always there. The Man Who Always Smiles. That was frightening because it’s not real. You knew he might have been feeling like shit, might have wanted to kill somebody, but this was his persona, to smile. And it’s not just him. That thing is everywhere.
    Playboy: Politicians—
    Depp: Every politician is John Davidson. Eight out of ten producers are John Davidson. I know directors and loads of actors who are John Davidson.
    Playboy: How about you? Have you ever been a Davidson?
    Depp: [ Nods ] There are times when you put on a smile. It’s a fucking drag, but you mask your feelings because there’s nothing else to do. For instance, you’re giving an interview and the guy says, “How are you?” You can’t say, “I feel fucking rotten, I don’t enjoy this shit and I would really like to strangle you.”
    Playboy: Uh-oh.
    Depp: Strangling is an extreme example. But here’s a John Davidson spot—being a presenter at the Academy Awards. I did that in 1994. I haven’t seen it, but people tell me it went OK. My face was probably frozen in fear, because there’s a weird marionette artificiality to those things. Backstage all I could think was, How do I get out of this? I absolutely almost fled. I had a few options swimming around in my brain. Just collapse, fall over unconscious, that was one. Projectile vomiting. Another option was to tell the truth. Just say, “Before I introduce Neil Young I want to say that I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t want to be here. I just want to go have a drink. I feel nervous and a little bit sick.” Of course, I wasn’t actually going to go out and say that. But what was really eating away at me was this: What if I suddenly get Tourette’s syndrome? What if I go out and start barking and saying motherfucker to the whole world?
    Playboy: But you did introduce Neil Young and get out of there safely.
    Depp: That was a good cigarette after that.
    Playboy: Wasn’t there a time you had a quasi-Tourette’s episode on a plane?
    Depp: Flying from L.A. to Vancouver for that television show [ 21 Jump Street ]. I was in first class and something came over me. I was already shaky about the flight when it hit me—you have to shout something shocking. Blurt something, or horrible things will happen.
    Playboy: So then you yelled, “I fuck animals!”
    Depp: Yeah.
    Playboy: And, indeed, the plane didn’t crash.
    Depp: It worked.
    Playboy: You even faced down your fear of John Davidson, didn’t you? He played a talk show host in Edward Scissorhands .
    Depp: I had nothing to do with that. It was strange to work with him after years of being afraid of him. He was doing Oklahoma! somewhere at the time and he had a perm.
    Playboy: How John Davidson of him.
    Depp: So I got rid of that demon. It was a weird exorcism. We talked about his perm.
    Playboy: You’ve had other demons. There was a guy who kept calling around town insisting he was you. He said you were an impostor who had stolen his identity.
    Depp: Sick. Scary. It was like the ultimate Dungeons & Dragons game, and I was the enemy.
    Playboy: He called the studio demanding the money he had