Johnny Depp: Snapshot

Johnny Depp: Five Fun Facts

1. Johnny Depp dared What's Eating Gilbert Grape costar Leonardo DiCaprio to sniff a rancid pickled egg and paid DiCaprio $500 when he did.
2. When he co-owned the Viper Room in L.A., Johnny Depp was known to hand out 50- and 100-dollar bills to the homeless huddled on the sidewalk near the club.
3. In 1993, while filming Arizona Dream with Faye Dunaway, Johnny Depp learned she wanted to jump on a trampoline. During a break in shooting, he and a friend drove 80 miles to a sporting goods store and brought one back to the set.
4. Asked the origin of his last name by James Lipton on Inside the Actors Studio, Johnny Depp said it means "idiot" in German.
5. In his younger days, Johnny Depp would often check in to hotels under risqué aliases such as "Mr. Donkey Penis."

Johnny Depp: Biography

1970-1979

Not Exactly Neverland

Depp's family settles in Miramar, Fla., when Depp is 7, living in a hotel until his father finds work. Prone to self-inflicted knife wounds – his arms still bear the visible scars – Depp starts smoking at 12, loses his virginity at 13, starts doing drugs at 14 and eventually drops out of high school at 16 to join the garage band, The Kids.

1987

April 12

Undercover Bother

With the successful premiere of high school cop drama 21 Jump Street, one of the first shows on the new FOX network, Depp becomes a teen heartthrob, receiving 10,000 fan letters a month. Although he signed a six-year contract with the show, not believing it would last a season, Depp begins to rebel against his heartthrob status and by 1990 negotiates his way out in order to pursue movie work. "He didn't make any secret of the fact that he didn't particularly care about being on that show," recalls castmate Holly Robinson to PEOPLE.

1989

June

Depp Dates Winona

Depp meets actress Winona Ryder at a film premiere and is immediately smitten. "There's been nothing in my 27 years that's comparable to the feeling I have with Winona," he tells PEOPLE at the time. Five months after their first date, the couple is engaged; three years later they split. Depp, who alters the "Winona Forever" tattoo on his right biceps to read "Wino Forever," seems to have a fiancée fetish: before Ryder, he was also briefly engaged to actresses Sherilyn Fenn and Jennifer Grey.

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Johnny Depp: Special Feature