Happy Birthday to a Famous Gemini, Johnny Depp!

John Christopher “Johnny” Depp II was born on June 9, 1963 in Owensboro, Kentucky.  The little boy from Kentucky grew up fast: films featuring Depp have grossed over $2.2 billion at the United States box office and over $4.7 billion worldwide. Depp has been nominated for three Academy Awards and has
won Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards.

The son of Betty Sue Palmer (née Wells), a waitress, and John Christopher Depp, Sr., a civil engineer, “little Johnny” engaged in self-harm as a child, due to the stress of dealing with family problems and his own insecurity.  He has seven or eight scars from practicing self-harm. In a 1993 interview, he
explained his self-injury by saying, “My body is a journal in a way. It’s like what sailors used to do, where every tattoo meant something, a specific time in your life when you make a mark on yourself, whether you do it yourself with a knife or with a professional tattoo artist”.

There have been several off-screen events in Depp’s personal life worth mentioning.  In 1994, Depp was arrested and questioned by police for allegedly causing serious damage to a New York City hotel suite.  He was arrested again in 1999 for brawling with paparazzi outside a restaurant while dining in London
with his girlfriend, Vanessa Paradis.

Depp has 13 tattoos, many of them signifying important persons or events in his life. They include a Native American in profile and a ribbon reading “Wino Forever” (originally “Winona Forever”, altered after his breakup with Winona Ryder) on his right biceps, “Lily-Rose” (his daughter’s name) over his heart,
“Betty Sue” (his mother’s name) on his left biceps, and a sparrow flying over water with the word “Jack” (his son’s name; the sparrow is flying towards him rather than away from him as it is in Pirates of the Caribbean) on his right forearm.

In 2003, Depp comments about the United States appeared in Germany’s Stern magazine, commenting that “America is dumb, is something like a dumb puppy that has big teeth — that can bite and hurt you, aggressive.”

Although he later asserted that the magazine misquoted him and the quotation was taken out of context, Stern stood by its story, as did CNN.com in its coverage of the interview. CNN added his remark that he would like
his children “to see America as a toy, a broken toy. Investigate it a little, check it out, get this feeling and then get out.” The July 17, 2006 edition of Newsweek reprinted the “dumb puppy” quotation, verbatim, within the context of a Letter to the Magazine. Depp has also disagreed with subsequent media reports that he says paint him as a “European wannabe” who enjoys the “simpler” life and anonymity that living in France provides.

You can find out more about Johnny Depp’s life, Depp’s filmography or Johnny Depp’s movies by playing an educational trivia game at MastersOfTrivia.com.