Johnny Depp

At Claridge's hotel in London, squirreled away at a table in the bar, over a relaxing glass of red wine, Johnny Depp lighted one of his hand-rolled cigarettes, grinned, leaned back, exhaled a plume and said, "Fuck it," quite happily. It was a Tuesday afternoon. Earlier, he'd thought to go to the Dorchester Hotel, one of his other usual haunts, but was put off by all the paparazzi and professional autograph hounds milling around, so he ended up here, talking about the movie he'd just finished shooting, the remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, his fourth film in fifteen years with director Tim Burton. "I have no idea what I did,'' he said, which is what he basically says about all his performances. "And I have no idea if it's anywhere near where it needs to be. I can only go by what I feel, and I feel good."

He smiled his slightly fractured, slightly raffish, entirely vulnerable smile and said that he was looking forward to a few months off before relocating himself and his family -- his girlfriend of seven years, French pop singer and actress Vanessa Paradis, and their two children, Jack, 2, and Lily-Rose Melody, 5 -- to Los Angeles to begin making the sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean, the 2003 blockbuster that got him his first Oscar nomination, in the Best Actor category, for his swishy rendering of Capt. Jack Sparrow. "Between now and then, what I'm going to do, I guess, is slobber and drool, space out, play Barbies with my daughter and sword-fight with my son,'' he said. As well, he let it be known that if anything like Lily-Rose's Barbie train set was in his immediate future, he might just go nuts. "I mean, those things are a real bastard to put together,'' he muttered, still smoking and obviously trying to remain calm. "So frustrating that they will send you onto the verge of a nervous breakdown."

Depp, 41, was silent for a moment, then added that if the gods really wanted to smile on him, they would also help him avoid one other thing: an Oscar nomination for his steadfast, low-key portrayal of Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie, in Finding Neverland, because that would mean he'd actually have to attend the Oscars, and while such a thing could not, of course, match the nerve-shivering hell of constructing a Barbie train set, it could, nonetheless, lead to some discomfort, just as it did when he and Paradis went to the Oscars after the Pirates nod. "All Vanessa and I could think of was 'When and where can we go smoke?' '' he said, frowning. "And, 'Where can we get a drink?' And, 'When is it over?' And, 'Please, don't let me win.' It was such a shock, to get the news that I'd been nominated. My first reaction was 'Why?' On one level I was flattered; but it's not what I'm working for. And when I didn't win the Thing -- oh, I was ecstatic. Absolutely ecstatic. I applauded the lucky winner [Sean Penn] and said, 'Thank God!' "