Johnny Depp: 'I don't want to be a product'

by Jarrett Martineau | December 13, 2007 at 11:20 am

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It's hard to lead a life of anonymous simplicity when you're one of the biggest film stars in the world. But the erstwhile Cpt Jack Sparrow -- and soon to be Sweeney Todd -- has made a conscientious effort to keep his private life private and to stay out of the loop when comes to the Hollywood hype machine.

Considered as both hearthrob and artistic outsider, Depp is one of the few actors of his generation to maintain the ability to move gracefully between the limelight and his homelife, without allowing every moment of his existence to become self-packaged for "anybody's entertainment".

To Johnny Depp, freedom means simplicity and anonymity.

[...]His friend and mentor Marlon Brando taught Depp to keep his private life private.

"That's your world and it's nobody else's business," he recalls Brando saying. "It's not anybody's entertainment."

A self-described people-watcher, Depp says he's learned to enter restaurants through the kitchen and hotels through the parking garage.

"It'll definitely make you a little weird if you're constantly being stared at," he says.

While he loves his work, Depp says he's "not a great fan of all the stuff that goes along with it."

"I don't want to be a product," he says. "Of course you want the movies to do well. But I don't want to know ... who's hot now and who's not and who's making this much dough and who's boffing this woman or that one. I want to remain ignorant of all this. I want to be totally outside and far away from all of it."