The Many Faces of Johnny Depp

Step inside the mad, mad world of Johnny Depp—one of Hollywood’s most famous, unique, and controversial actors of all time—and find the story of his unconventional life, career, and comeback 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 Hollywood 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 on 21 Jump Street and then an idiosyncratic Tim Burton collaborator in Edward Scissorhands and seven other films, along with an astonishing array of other movies. But after his performance as Captain Jack Sparrow in the mega-blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean, Depp was transformed overnight into, in the words of his former agent, the “biggest star in the world.” Pirates came at a steep cost—so much money and so much fame, and so very fast. Like his idols Hunter S. Thompson, Marlon Brando, and Keith Richards, Depp is one of the last true renegades, mixing his internal and external chaos with his art, his life rivaling the drama of the incredible collection of faces he’s worn on-screen. In recent years, his real life has taken center stage, with his divorce from Amber Heard and defamation trial, a livestreamed court battle that rallied millions behind #JusticeForJohnnyDepp. He emerged, in his words, “shunned, dumped, booted, deep-sixed, canceled.” Now, he’s making a comeback (though he rejects that word), appearing in at least two forthcoming films. With insights from almost a hundred individuals who have known Depp, this biography traces the timing, talent, trauma, and sheer luck that transformed a rock and roll kid from Florida into a celebrity supernova.

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.