Johnny Depp is writing his life story.
The 55-year-old actor began writing a book before the 2016 end of his marriage to Amber Heard and he’s currently half way through the tome, which he revealed has no fixed structure and features his "memories" and "beauty and knowledge" he’s taken from his friends and idols.
He said: "I kind of started a book, a couple of months before I broke up with Amber.
"I’ve written around 300 pages. I have about 300 more pages more to go. I am halfway. They are more memories. And some of the beauty and the knowledge that I’ve been able to glean or sponge off of some of these magic f***ing people I know, from Brando to Hunter to Patti Smith to Dylan to Ginsberg.
"I have been so lucky to have met all these folk. I don’t have cards or make notes really. No structure is blocked out. I have reminders. I’ll make a list of reminders.
"It’s not written in any kind of linear form. It should be more like the unplanned telling of a story around the campfire."
The ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ star admitted he found it hard writing about his "dark" childhood and the verbal and physical abuse he received at the hands of his mother.
Asked if it was hard to write about his painful memories, he told Britain’s GQ magazine: "Sure. I mean my childhood was dark. My mum wouldn’t edit. There was no editing.
"She would say what she meant, what she felt, in that instant. No matter how wrong it might have been even, or how hideously evil it was in the moment, she didn’t edit. It came out: bleurgh!
"She was out of her mind, obviously, and she didn’t know what the f**k she was doing. She got four kids and she hated the world.
"Was there f**k loads of verbal abuse? Yeah, man. Was there f**k loads of physical abuse? Yes. And never-ending, to the point that pain, physical pain, was just a given. But the last four, five years that I was involved, let’s say… Well, that was quite a dark time too."
But Johnny – who has children Lily-Rose, 19, and Jack, 16, with former partner Vanessa Paradis – found that reflecting on his past over a long period has made him realise he’s now "beyond it" and it’s put the other difficulties in his life into perspective.
He said: "I mean, you can write about those things and what’s interesting is you write about those things early on and once you’ve had a few years away from that chapter you go back and reread what you’ve done so far.
"And then you realise that you do feel the same way you did, but you’re so far beyond it. It puts everything else into perspective.
"Because at a certain point one must be able to say, ‘What the f**k else can any of you do now? What else can any of you do to hurt me?’ "
Johnny Depp penning memoir
