QUOTES -- BY JOHNNY
ON FRANCE
France and the whole of Europe have a great culture and an amazing history. Most important thing though is that people there know how to live! In America they've forgotten all about it. I'm afraid that the American culture is a disaster.
I love our house in the country. I can walk to the nearby village and have a coffee and no one pays any notice. I'm just another dad with my daughter on my knee. The time I've spent in France with Vanessa has solidified my belief that I can keep a major distance from Hollywood and still keep in the game. Acting is my living, but I don't want to live it. Living in France is the first time I can honestly say I feel at home.
ON GOSSIP / RUMORS
The only gossip I'm interested in is things from the Weekly World News - 'Woman's bra bursts, 11 injured.' That kind of thing.
This is a rumor-filled society and if people want to sit around and talk about whom I've dated, then I'd say they have a lot of spare time and should consider other topics... or masturbation.
ON GROWING UP
I don't have a mental picture of the houses we lived in because there were so many.
As a teenager I was so insecure. I was the type of guy that never fitted in because he never dared to choose. I was convinced I had absolutely no talent at all. For nothing. And that thought took away all my ambition too.
Puberty was very vague. I literally locked myself in a room and played guitar.
I was a weird kid. I wanted to be Bruce Lee. I wanted to be on a SWAT team. When I was five, I think I wanted to be Daniel Boone.
On living in the small town Miramar as a kid: "Miramar was like Endora, the town in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? It had two identical grocery stores opposite each other and nothing much ever happened there."
I wanted to be everything from Evel Knievel to the first white Harlem Globetrotter--I'm still trying! Then I wanted to play guitar, and now I'm here, doing this, acting.
ON HATS
When asked by James Lipton on "Inside The Actor's Studio" (1987) what attracts him to funny hats: "I don't know, maybe I just read too much Dr. Seuss as a kid."
ON LIFE
I'm an old-fashioned guy... I want to be an old man with a beer belly sitting on a porch, looking at a lake or something.
There's a drive in me that won't allow me to do certain things that are easy. I can weigh all the options, but there's always one thing that goes: "Johnny, this is the one." And it's always the most difficult - it's always the one that will cause the most trouble.
On The Three Words To Live By: "I don't know."
ON LOVE
The only creatures that are evolved enough to convey pure love are dogs and infants.
ON MARLON BRANDO
Marlon Brando is maybe the greatest actor of the last two centuries. But his mind is much more important than the acting thing. The way that he looks at things, doesn't judge things, the way that he assesses things. He's as important as, uh... who's important today? Jesus, not many people... Stephen Hawking!
ON MONEY
You use your money to buy privacy because during most of your life you aren't allowed to be normal.
ON MOVIE CHARACTERS
Captain Jack Sparrow is like a cross between Keith Richards and Pepe Le Pew.
I can remember when I finished 'Edward Scissorhands,' looking in the mirror as the girl was doing my make-up for the last time and thinking -- it was like the 90th or 89th day of shooting -- and I remember looking and going, 'Wow, this is it. I'm saying goodbye to this guy, I'm saying goodbye to Edward Scissorhands.' You know, it was kind of sad. But in fact, I think they're all still somehow in there.
I loved playing Edward Scissorhands because there's nothing cynical, jaded or impure about him. It's almost a letdown to look in the mirror and realize I'm not Edward.
On preparing to sing as Sweeney Todd: "It's a bit like jumping into cold water. There's no preparing, you just do it."
About Ed Wood: "Like him I also grew up feeling like an obtuse piece of machinery. It was the same feeling I had about Edward Scissorhands."
When asked by Rolling Stone if there is a "gay undercurrent" to his portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies: "Well, there was a great book I read. . . . What was it called? Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition. A very interesting book. I wasn't exactly going for that with the character. And Keith is not flamboyant in his actions. Keith is pretty stealth. But with Jack, it was more that I liked the idea of being ambiguous, of taking this character and making everything a little bit . . . questionable. Because women were thought to be bad luck on ships. And these pirates would go out for years at a time. So, you know, there is a possibility that one thing might lead to another."
ON MUSIC
There's nothing - you know - nothing else like music. Nothing that touches us on that, uh, that deep level. Music can open up so many emotions that we didn't know we had. It's the magical thing about musicals, you know, on the stage or on film or whatever. Love songs. They work so well because music touches us, emotionally, where words alone can't.
My cousins had a gospel group and they came down and played gospel songs, and that was the first time I ever saw an electric guitar. I got obsessed with the electric guitar, so my Mom bought me one from them for $25. I was about twelve years old. Then I locked myself in a room for a year and taught myself how to play, learned off records, and then I started playing in little garage bands. The first group I was ever in was called Flame. Then I was in The Kids. They were the ones who moved to Hollywood.
ON PAPARAZZI
What's confusing to my kids is why there are so many people who want to take mommy and daddy's photograph. So we have a little game where we hide our face in daddy's shoulder. When we get in the car and we've passed all the photographers, then we can bring our face out. They don't need to be exposed to that absurdity of that frenzy. Lily-Rose asks, 'Why do they want to take your picture?' My answer is always the same: 'I don't know.' Because I don't.
ON PERSONALITY
I am moody sometimes. I think it's necessary for actors.
ON TATTOOS
My body is a journal in a way. It's like what sailors used to do, where every tattoo meant something, a specific time in your life when you make a mark on yourself, whether you do it yourself with a knife or with a professional tattoo artist.
ON TIM BURTON
He can ask me everything. If he wants me to have sex with an aardvark in one of his next movies, then I will do that.
What more can I say about him? He is a brother, a friend, my godson's father. He is a unique and brave soul, someone that I would go to the ends of the earth for, and I know, full and well, he would do the same for me.
ON THE WORLD
If you turn on the television and see the horrors that are happening to people in the world right now, I think there's no better time to strive to have some kind of hope through imagination. I think it's a time to close your eyes and try to make a change, or at least hope to make a change, or we're going to explode.
MISC.
After being asked if he is a romantic: "Am I a romantic? I've seen 'Wuthering Heights' ten times. I'm a romantic."
On his weird dreams: "One was about Gilligan's Island. In my dream, the skipper is chasing me all over town. And I'm running from him, but I can't get away. What does that mean?"
