Despite being one of the most admired actors of his generation, Johnny Depp says his lengthy success in Hollywood has been a surreal, logic-defying experience – akin to stepping through the looking glass into Wonderland.

“The whole ride – my whole ride and experience on the ride – since day one has been pretty surreal in this business,” Depp, told reporters while promoting the highly anticipated film Alice In Wonderland. The actor plays the Mad Hatter in his seventh collaboration with director and friend Tim Burton.

“It defies logic, why I’m still here,” said Depp – People’s Sexiest Man Alive. “I’m still completely shocked that I still get jobs and still am around. But I guess more than anything it has been a kind of Wonderland. I’ve been very lucky.”

“I had no idea where anything was going, but you can’t,” he continued. “It’s almost impossible to predict anything like that. I had no idea. I had hoped … I felt like after I’d done Cry-Baby with John Waters and Edward Scissorhands with Tim that they were going to cut me off right then.”

“I felt at that point that I was on solid ground and I knew where I was going – or where I wanted to go – and I was sure that they would nix me out of the gate. But I’m luckily still here.”

Although he’s currently playing an icon of children’s literature, Depp says his children Lily-Rose, 10 ½, and Jack, 7 ½, have gravitated to one of those earlier characters.

“It’s Edward Scissorhands. That’s by far my kids’ favorite,” he revealed. “And it’s funny because they’ve seen it but they have a difficult time watching it because it’s their dad and they make that connection. They just connect with the character and also they see their dad feeling that isolation, feeling that loneliness. He’s a tragic character and so I think it’s hard for them. They bawl when they see that movie.”

Source, Fame Pictures

Johnny Depp has come to the defense of Roman Polanski as he faces extradition to the U.S. on child sex charges – insisting the embattled director is “not a predator”.

The Oscar-winning filmmaker pleaded guilty to a charge of unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977, but fled the States before his sentence could be passed.

He was arrested in Zurich last year and placed under house arrest in Switzerland. Last month, a Los Angeles judge ruled he must return to the U.S. to face sentencing.

But Depp, who collaborated with the 76 year old on 1999 thriller The Ninth Gate, insists U.S. prosecutors should take Polanski’s current home life into consideration and let the 32-year-old charges go.

Defending his former boss’ character, Depp explains: “Roman is not a predator. He’s 75 or 76 years old. He has got two beautiful kids, he has got a wife that he has been with for a long, long time. He is not out on the street.”

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Johnny Depp is hard to resist. So, it’s no wonder his longtime girlfriend, Vanessa Paradis, couldn’t resist having the star’s children.

“I’d wanted to be a mother for a long time, but with him I couldn’t avoid it,” the French singer, 37, reveals in a new interview with the U.K.’s Sunday Times Magazine. “He was, and still is, the love of my life.”

Paradis has dated the Pirates of the Caribbean star, 46, for 11 years, and they have two children, Lily Rose, 10, and Jack, 7.

How do they make their relationship last?

“There is a lot of friendship between us, respect and admiration,” she says. “We’ve understood that if we want it to carry on working, it’s essential to give each other space. You don’t eat the same food every day, you don’t read the same book or listen to the same record over and over again. You have to discover things for yourself.”

She says that Depp is a wonderful dad.

“I could go on and on about all the things I admire in him,” she says. “I like watching him when he’s thinking, when he’s talking with people. I like seeing how he handles situations. I admire him as an actor, as a father, as a man. Above all, I admire the person he is. He’s fantastic.”

Source, Fame Pictures

Jude Law says he was humbled personally and professionally to be asked to help take over Heath Ledger’s final movie role, which Ledger left unfinished when he died in January 2008.

“When I got the call, it was a double tug,” Law says of joining the cast of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. “I liked Heath very much as a man and admired him as an actor. To help finish his final piece of work was a tribute I felt compelled to make.”

Ledger was in the midst of filming the role of Tony in the fantasy film, directed by Terry Gilliam, when he died from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs in his New York apartment on Jan. 22, 2008, at age 28.

Determined to finish the movie, Gilliam kept Ledger’s work intact, and hired Law, Johnny Depp and Colin Farrell to round out the role of Tony – each playing a different incarnation of the character after he steps through a magical mirror.

“To help Terry finish his film was an honor paid to a man I adore,” Law says. “Though we were all there in remembrance, Heath’s heart pushed us with great lightness to the finish.”

Lily Cole, who plays the female lead as Tony’s love interest Valentina, says it was a struggle to resume filming just a month after Ledger’s death.

“We’d had a month to absorb that situation, which by no means is enough time to get over it, but it was a month to think about finishing the film,” Cole tells Film Review Online.

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, which Gilliam has dedicated to Ledger, opens in limited release in the U.S. on Christmas Day and in wide release on Jan. 8.

Source, Bauer-Griffin

Johnny Depp doesn’t need to see his own movies to know they’re good. The Associated Press reports that Johnny highly recommended his latest film Wednesday at the Japan premiere of Public Enemies in Tokyo, even though he hasn’t actually seen it yet.

“I haven’t seen the film yet, but I hear great things about it,” Johnny said at a news conference at a Tokyo hotel.

Even though has been out in the U.S. since July 1, Johnny still hasn’t seen the film because he makes it a practice not to watch his own movies. He said he likes making movies, but doesn’t enjoy watching himself in movies.

But Johnny doesn’t have to see himself to know it’s a good film because he’s just that good of an actor. He says he also felt especially connected to his Public Enemies character, John Dillinger, the bank robber who was declared public enemy No. 1 by federal authorities in Depression-era in America, because his own grandfather was pushed into illegal activities during the Depression like “moonshining,” brewing illegal liquor, to make a living in Kentucky.

He included John, who eventually was killed by police, as one of his childhood idols along with Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.

Johnny may have idolized John, but he definitely didn’t make enemies like John did.

“I don’t think I have any enemies, really,” he said. “The scariest enemy is within, allowing yourself to conform to what is expected of you.”

Johnny will have an opportunity to watch the movie Thursday, should he choose to do so. He’s attending a red carpet event before its Tokyo showing, and will address fans at the theater.

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Tim Burton and actor Johnny Depp will team for a feature film version of the classic 1960s soap opera “Dark Shadows.”

The film will shoot in the fall, with Depp set to play the vampire Barnabas Collins, according to producer Graham King.

“We’re actually going to shoot that film next September/October with Tim Burton and Johnny,” King confirmed in an interview Friday in Los Angeles.

To guarantee a fall release, King is already prepping production with screenwriters.

“We’ve been working on the script a lot, even though he’s working on ‘Alice,’” King said. “We’ve been given a script. John August wrote the first screenplay. We’re making some changes, but the film’s going to be in production …”

From 1966 to 1971, “Dark Shadows” was a daytime gothic soap opera on ABC, featuring Jonathan Frid as Collins. NBC attempted a prime-time series reboot in 1991 that stared Ben Cross.

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