"I never wanted to be the guy people looked at. I felt I could only be myself when I was alone, that I turned into some kind of novelty."

"The only way I could get through that time was to drink. I poisoned myself with alcohol for years but I've never been into drugs in the way it was sometimes made out."

Oh, the exquisite pain of being Johnny Depp -- a pain endured in the company of Kate Moss and the guys in Oasis. "I've never been into drugs in the way it was sometimes made out"... makes you wonder about all the ways of being into drugs.

And how can you not want to be the guy people looked at yet still become an actor? Actually, I think it's easy to penetrate that conundrum. He wanted to be an actor to hide inside characters that were invented by someone else. He could be in the world without having to be himself. Ah, yes:

"I was a million percent in love with Edward Scissorhands," Depp says of his 1990 film persona. "I remember looking in the mirror on the last day of shooting ... and thinking how sad I was to be saying goodbye to Edward."

Here he is attempting to talk about it, back in 1991 (when everyone, it seems, looked and acted completely different: