Depp's mother bought him a guitar when he was twelve, and he began playing in garage bands. His first band was in honor of his girlfriend Meredith. One year after his parents divorced, he dropped out of high school to become a rock musician.
Depp's mother bought him a guitar when he was twelve, and he began playing in garage bands. His first band was in honor of his girlfriend Meredith. One year after his parents divorced, he dropped out of high school to become a rock musician.
Johnny Depp's first major role was in the 1984 horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street, playing the heroine's boyfriend and one of Freddy's victims. In 1986, he also appeared in a secondary role as a Vietnamese speaking private in Oliver Stone's Platoon. Depp left his teen idol image in 1990, after playing the quirky title role in the Tim Burton film, Edward Scissor hands.
Depp's film characters have been described by the press as "iconic loners, and Depp has noted that this period of his career was full of "studio defined failures" and films that were "box office poison, stating that he believes film studios never "understood" the films he appeared in and did not know how to market them properly. Depp has also said that he specifically chose to appear in films that he found personally interesting, rather than those he thought would succeed at the box office.
In 2003, Depp was quoted as criticizing the United States 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 had misquoted him and that the quotation was taken out of context, Stern stood by its story, as did CNN.com in its coverage of the interview, which 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."




