Johnny Depp

I do realise and understand very well on a profound level how lucky I am and what a privileged position it is and what it's done ultimately for me, my family and my kids. But at the same time, there are moments in a man's life when you just kind of want to feel somewhat normal.

I'll take photographs with kids. People who want to take photographs with me. People who like the movies. People who supported me. I'll do that all day, all night, that's fine. But the bombardment of the paparazzi is just... I truly don't understand. It just feels like this kind of gluttonous, horrific sport. It's like sport.

When I can focus on something like guitar or painting, I do. I started painting people I admire, like Kerouac, Bob Dylan, Nelson Algren, Marlon Brando, Patti Smith, my girl, my kids.

With my kids, they're told 75 times a day that they're loved. One thing I know is they feel loved and secure and happy and needed and necessary and a part of something.

One of the most beautiful things in the world is seeing a mommy with her kids. There's nothing more beautiful, nothing more sublime.

When kids hit one year old, it's like hanging out with a miniature drunk. You have to hold onto them. They bump into things. They laugh and cry. They urinate. They vomit.

If there's any message to my work, it is ultimately that it's OK to be different, that it's good to be different, that we should question ourselves before we pass judgment on someone who looks different, behaves different, talks different, is a different color.

I was ecstatic they re-named 'French Fries' as 'Freedom Fries'. Grown men and women in positions of power in the U.S. government showing themselves as idiots.

Simplicity - that's what I want. It's been a rare commodity for me for a number of years, but I enjoy being able to hang out with my girl, read the newspaper, and sit back and start to read a book by someone I admire, like Lawrence Krauss or Christopher Hitchens. And that's it - simplicity, where the game of Hollywood doesn't exist.

I don't go anywhere without a book by James Joyce called 'Finnegan's Wake.'

I think, as an actor, it is good to feel the fear of failing miserably. I think you should take that risk. Fear is a necessary ingredient in everything I do. But if I do 'Hamlet,' it will probably be in a small theater on a small stage, and it will have to be very, very soon because I'm getting a little long in the tooth for it.

I did do a film that I refer to as 'The Unpronounceable' by a guy named Yvan Attal with Charlotte Gainsbourg. I had a bit part in there. That was quite fun, doing scenes in French.