The Secret World Of Johnny Depp

Nigel Goodall has written more than a dozen books, including the best-selling Winona Ryder (Blake, 1998), nominated for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in 1999. He was a production associate for Channel 4's The Real Winona Ryder. His other books include Elton John: A Visual Documentary, an illustrated Rolling Stones book and the bestseller Kylie Naked: A Biography (Ebury,2002, with Jenny Stanley-Clarke). He writes for magazines and contributes to various album, video and television projects. Nigel is divorced with two children.

Johnny Depp is Hollywood's best-loved rebel. In a career spanning two decades, he has endeared himself to audiences as diverse as the roles he has played - adults, teenage girls, movie buffs and geeks alike have been charmed by his virtuoso eccentricity and willingness to take on unconventional films for a mass audience. From his debut in Nightmare on Elmstreet, to Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, and Chocolat to the spectacular success of Pirates of the Caribbean, Johnny has reached a level of popularity with audiences and respect from critics that most actors merely dream of.

The story of one of Hollywood's biggest stars, whose extraordinary journey has taken him from schoolboy misfit and hedonistic rock-star to a compelling Oscar nominated actor and devoted family man.

From beloved bad-boy to cool and captivating maverick, Johnny Depp has inspired media intrigue and has been the source of international acclaim since the early 1990s. He has attracted attention for his eccentric image, his accidental acting career, his beguiling good looks, and his quirky charm. In Johnny Depp Starts Here, film scholar Murray Pomerance explores our fascination with Depp, his riddling complexity, and his meaning for our culture. Moving beyond the actor's engaging and inscrutable private life, Pomerance focuses on his enigmatic screen performances from A Nightmare on Elm Street to Secret Window. The actor's image is studied in terms of its ambiguities and its many strange nuances: Depp's ethnicity, his smoking, his tranquility, his unceasing motion, his links to the Gothic, the Beats, Simone de Beauvoir, the history of rationality, Impressionist painting, and more. In a series of treatments of his key roles, including Rafael in The Brave, Bon Bon in Before Night Falls, Jack Kerouac in The Source, and the long list of acclaimed performances from Gilbert Grape to Cap'n Jack Sparrow, we learn of Johnny onscreen in terms of male sexuality, space travel, optical experience, nineteenth-century American capitalism, Orientalism, the vulnerability of performance, the perils of sleep, comedy, the myth of the West, Scrooge McDuck, Frantois Truffaut, and more. Johnny's face, Johnny's gaze, Johnny's aging, and Johnny's understatement are shown to be inextricably linked to our own desperate need to plumb performance, style, and screen for a grounding of reality in this ever-accelerating world of fragmentation and insecurity. Both deeply intriguing and perpetually elusive, Depp is revealed as the central screen performer of the contemporary age, the symbol of performance itself. No thinker has meditated on Johnny Depp this way before-and surely not in a manner worthy of the object of scrutiny.

The star of some of the best and most unconventional American films in recent history, Johnny Depp has also been a source of media fascination since the 90s. His film roles have always been idiosyncratic, earning him international respect and adoration—fromEdward Scissorhands, Ed Wood,andDonnie Brascoto his surprising star turn as the swashbuckling Captain Jack Sparrow inPirates of the Caribbean,which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. His good looks, oddball charm, and tempestuous love affairs have helped push him into the limelight and kept him there. Now in this biography, Nigel Goodall looks at his bad-boy image, his rise to fame, and his high-profile romances with beautiful women such as Winona Ryder, Kate Moss, and longtime love Vanessa Paradis.

Traces the events and circumstances that have shaped Johnny Depp's career and propelled him from embryonic rock musician to serious and respected actor. It tells of his childhood drug problem and concentrates on his notoriety as one of Hollywood's bad boys and his role as co-owner of the Viper Room, revealing also the story of his numerous affairs.

Charismatic, talented, intriguingly private and not forgetting devastatingly handsome, Johnny Depp is an actor who has captured the hearts and imaginations of people worldwide. The range of roles in which he has starred make him one of the world's most bankable and sought-after actors - from Alice in Wonderland to Edward Scissorhands, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Pirates of the Caribbean, films starring Johnny Depp have grossed over $6 billion worldwide. However, it is not only his assumed roles, but the man himself who has attracted the interest of audiences the world over. His roller-coaster life has taken him from young hell-raiser to Oscar-nominated actor and caring family man, and this timely biography tells his story from the beginning; from his childhood days, through his first forays into film and on to stardom. Along the way, readers will also discover more about what makes this icon tick, how he has changed over the years and how he feels about acting today. This is a must-read book for any of his countless fans.

The star of some of the best American films in recent history, Johnny Depp is also one of Hollywood's most versatile and enigmatic actors. From Edward Scissorhands, What's Eating Gilbert Grape?, Ed Wood, and Donnie Brasco to his Oscar-nominated performances in Pirates of the Caribbean and Finding Neverland his film roles have always been unconventional, earning him international respect and adoration. In Johnny Depp: A Kind of Illusion, film journalist Denis Meikle looks at the effects that Depp's rising critical and commercial stature may have on the direction of his career, including his recent film Pirates of the Caribbean 2.