Johnny Depp was born on 9 June 1963 in Owensboro, Kentucky, the son of John, a civil engineer, and Betty Sue, a waitress.
The young Depp nurtured dreams of rock’n'roll stardom, fronted a series of garage bands and years later would play lead slide guitar on an album with Oasis. But in 1983. Depp read a biography of James Dean, watched Rebel Without a Cause and knew he wanted to act. He arrived in Los Angeles and was introduced Nicolas Cage, who, in turn, introduced him to his agent. He auditioned for the 1984 budget horror classic A Nightmare on Elm Street and, to his amazement, landed a part.
Three years later, he became established, playing a cop in the TV series 21 Jump Street, and in 1990 came Edward Scissorhands, the first of several collaborations with director Tim Burton, whom he has thanked for rescuing him from being ‘a loser, an outcast, just another piece of expendable Hollywood meat’.
Depp and Burton seemed to share a Gothic passion, if not obsession, with all that is creepy, eerily enigmatic and downright strange. They went on to collaborate on Corpse Bride, an animated horror comedy, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, in which Depp’s dangerous Willy Wonka was true to the dark centre of Roald Dahl’s original.
So who else to play Inspector Fred Abberline, a clairvoyant Victorian detective hunting the Jack the Ripper in 2001’s From Hell? Although the film was shot in Prague, Depp’s enthusiasm took him first to London for a personal tour of the Ripper’s crime scenes.
