Nigel Goodall - The Secret World of Johnny Depp

T he English writer Richard Holmes described the meaning of biography as: A kind of pursuit, a tracking down of the physical trail of someones path through the past, a following in the footsteps, of someone you would never quite catch. But maybe if you were lucky you might write about the pursuit of that fleeting figure in such a way as to bring it alive into the present.

Looking back, that analogy seems apt to best describe my aim ever since I first wrote about Johnny Depp in 1997, in my biography of Winona Ryder, Johnnys highest profile girlfriend before Kate Moss. His three-year engagement to Winona was essential to my writing of her story. If I have succeeded in my aim, then I hope I have given the reader the correct tools to create his or her own portrait of one of Hollywoods most respected actors.

Back then, of course, if you had tossed a rock in Hollywood, the odds were reasonably high you would have hit some pretty boy haunted by his teen idol status and moaning about getting his due respect as a serious actor. Precisely the kind of teen pin-up star Johnny Depp used to be. In the years that have passed, of course, since he fronted every teen magazine at every newspaper stall, the 21 Jump Street star has made a concerted effort to leave his teen idol years behind and attain artistic credibility in its stead. And in so doing, he has created a body of work that stands proud in its integrity.

He passed on the Speed role that catapulted Keanu Reeves to stardom, declined offers to play Interview With the Vampires Lestat, and Bram Stokers Dracula (plum parts snatched up by Tom Cruise and Gary Oldman), rejected the mythic Legends of the Fall and the Thelma and Louise hustler assignments later taken by Brad Pitt, and chose to bequeath the roles of Robin Hood and Charlie Chaplin to Kevin Costner and Robert Downey Jnr.

Instead Johnny cemented his reputation in Hollywood by brilliantly portraying such outr souls as the lonesome, freakish protagonist of Edward Scissorhands, and the independent, cross-dressing Plan Nine From Outer Space director Ed Wood. As Johnny once explained, being a blockbuster boy was never on his agenda, so isnt it ironic that today, he is now the number one box office star in Hollywood, simply for doing what he usually does, playing a role that interests him. Except on this occasion, portraying a roguish pirate gentleman, in Jerry Bruckheimers action adventure Pirates of the Caribbean, earned him his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor. As Johnny told Chris Connelly on the red carpet outside the Kodak Theater along Hollywood Boulevard during the arrivals for the 76th Annual Academy Awards ceremony, This is a horse of a different colour.

The product of a small-town, blue-collar upbringing, Johnny was born to an engineer father and a homemaker mother in Owensboro, Kentucky. As a young boy, he spent as much time as possible visiting his beloved grandfather, who died shortly after Johnnys seventh birthday. That same year, Johnnys family moved to Florida, where his father found employment as director of public works in the coastal town of Miramar. Distraught over the death of his grandfather, and feeling displaced by the loss of the only permanent home he had known (the family lived in a dozen different houses after relocating to Florida), Johnny had become a surly and disinterested student by the time he reached high school.