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Johnny Depp opens up about drinking, money and marriage: 'I was as low as I believe I could have gotten'

The actor's 'personal and financial lives' crashed all at once

Ilana Kaplan
Thursday 21 June 2018 22:49 BST
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Johnny Depp reveals details of his personal and financial life in new tell-all interview.
Johnny Depp reveals details of his personal and financial life in new tell-all interview. (Getty Images)

Actor Johnny Depp reveals that he was "as low as I believe I could have gotten" in a new tell-all interview about his personal and financial life.

The Pirates of the Caribbean actor recalled how everything in his life came crashing down all at once in a conversation with Rolling Stone.

While Depp explained that he felt "low" after his then-wife - actress Amber Heard - filed for divorce in 2016, he doesn't speak more about the situation because of a non-disclosure agreement that was a part of their divorce settlement.

At the same time, he was also dealing with the death of his mother, Betty Sue, who died from cancer the same year.

"I was as low as I believe I could have gotten," Depp tells the magazine. "The next step was, ‘You’re going to arrive somewhere with your eyes open and you’re going to leave there with your eyes closed.’ I couldn’t take the pain every day."

When his divorce with Heard was finalised in January 2017, he also filed a $25m lawsuit against his longtime business manager at The Management Group (TMG): Joel Mandel, along with his brother Robert, for his $40m debt and claiming negligent misrepresentation, fraud, wrongful foreclosure and a breach of fiduciary duty.

The Management Group then filed a cross-complaint in court documents saying, "TMG did everything within its power over the last 17 years to protect Depp from himself and to keep Depp financially solvent...However, ultimately TMG did not have the power or ability to control Depp's spending or his numerous other vices, or to force Depp to make wiser financial decisions."

To deal with his personal and financial pain, he went on tour with his band the Hollywood Vampires and began writing a memoir on an old-fashioned typewriter.

"I poured myself a vodka in the morning and started writing until the tears filled my eyes and I couldn’t see the page anymore," he recalls. "I kept trying to figure out what I’d done to deserve this. I’d tried being kind to everyone, helping everyone, being truthful to everyone. The truth is most important to me. And all this still happened."

He addressed his excess spending on alcohol saying, "It's insulting to say that I spent $30,000 on wine ... because it was far more."

Heard famously filed for divorce after 15 months of marriage in 2016.

The couple wed in February 2015 after initially meeting on the set of 2011's The Rum Diary.

When the divorce was finalised in early 2017, she was granted $7m a settlement, which she donated to charity in April 2018.

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