The Many Faces of Johnny Depp

Step inside the mad, mad world of Johnny Depp—one of the most famous, unique, and controversial actors of all time—and find the story of his unconventional life from Mark Seal, the New York Times bestselling author of Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli. 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.

Mark Seal joined Vanity Fair as a contributing editor in 2003, covering stories as varied as the Bernie Madoff scandal, Ghislaine Maxwell, the fall of Olympian Oscar Pistorius, the making of classic films such as Pulp Fiction, and many more. His 2016 Vanity Fair article "The Over the Hill Gang," about a gang of retired thieves who pulled off the biggest jewel heist in British history, was the basis of the 2018 film, King of Thieves, starring Michael Caine. In addition to Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli, he is the author of the books Wildflower and The Man in the Rockefeller Suit. His website is Mark-Seal.com.