Johnny Depp: Why Curiosity About His Personal Life and Who Was ‘Bumping Uglies’ Bothered Him
Many unsavory aspects of Johnny Depp‘s personal life were displayed throughout his literal trials and tribulations with his ex-wife Amber Heard. But long before that started, the actor once explained why it was such a bother to him that the press and public cared about what he did in private.
Keep scrolling to find out what Depp thought people looked for when they through his trash, why it bothered him that the media and public were so curious about his love life, and how he dealt with it all in the early years.
People dug through Johnny Depp’s trash for dirt on his personal life
During a 1993 interview from Entertainment Tonight’s vault, Depp talked about the stranger aspects of fame. For instance, individuals became so obsessed with digging up dirt on his personal life that they dug through his trash. “There was a time when people — whoever they were — were sort of fascinated with what I might be throwing away,” he explained.
“It just happens,” he chuckled before adding he had never become interested in anyone else’s garbage. When asked what someone going through his trash cans might have been looking for, the two-time Sexiest Man Alive guessed with a smile, “Adult diapers maybe.”
Johnny Depp didn’t care for curiosities over his personal life and who was ‘bumping uglies’ in Hollywood
Depp shared a few negative notes about Hollywood and being famous in that early interview. He explained how he watched himself being commodified in a dehumanizing way. His public persona started to take on a life of its own, and it all got “stretched out into this really absurd kind of surreal thing.”
He was an actor trying to do his job, but certain aspects made that challenging for him. “Suddenly, you reach a certain level in your career and this … wheel starts spinning about your past and your future and your present,” he explained. “And who you were with last night and what club … and, you know, how many people you’ve quite possibly bumped uglies with.”
That part of fame frustrated Depp because it wasn’t about the work. “It becomes this kind of showboat thing,” he said. “This sort of society of ambulance chasers …”
Perhaps Depp was still coming out of his 1993 breakup with Winona Ryder, which he confessed left him reeling. “My relationship with Winona, it was my mistake to be as open as we were,” he said (per Marie Claire.) “But I thought if we were honest, it would destroy that curiosity monster. Instead, it fed it, gave people license to feel they were part of it.”
How did Johnny Depp deal with curiosities about his personal life?
Though Depp already found being in the public eye irritating in some ways by 1993, he learned to deal with it by laying low, he told ET. He said he wasn’t big on Hollywood functions because he “didn’t do well” at them.
“I don’t go there so much,” he shrugged. “I just kind of stay home.”
And that worked for Depp for many years, seemingly until he was accused of domestic violence by Heard in 2016. Until then, he was considered to have maintained an air of mystery about his private persona. But he seemed to expose much of his actual personality on the stand in his defamation trial in Virginia. And the jury repaid him with a $10.35 million win.
How to get help: In the U.S., call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788.
