WHAT’S WRONG With Johnny?
A shocking photo has fans fearing Johnny Depp’s rock-star lifestyle has finally caught up with him
He didn’t look like himself. While on tour with his band, Hollywood Vampires, in St. Petersburg, Russia, on May 30, Johnny Depp posed for a photo with a fan, his hair tucked under a hat, his face free of his signature black eyeliner, cheeks pale and gaunt. Some people who saw the actor were alarmed. “My hero looks ill,” wrote one shocked fan on Facebook, while another warned on Twitter that the actor “is not doing well, guys.”
That’s an understatement. Johnny, 55, “doesn’t take care of himself like he should,” an insider tells In Touch. “He still lives a rock-star lifestyle. He drinks and smokes… the list goes on. He’s got to stop.” The onetime heartthrob apparently lost weight to film Richard Says Goodbye, in which he plays a terminally ill professor, last year, but it isn’t clear the current drastic weight loss is related. One expert estimates the actor — who’s reportedly been suffering financial problems and had a violent, bitter breakup with exwife Amber Heard in 2016 — has dropped about 25 pounds in seven months. Says a source: “He’s an emotional wreck. With his life in a free fall, Johnny seems to be on the brink of a major meltdown.”
He’s been spiraling for years. Not long after his nasty split from Amber, who accused him of physical and psychological abuse during their 15-month marriage,
the actor became embroiled in a $25 million fraud lawsuit against his former managers, who filed a countersuit detailing the out-of-control spending that has left the former 21 Jump Street hunk nearly broke. During a 2016 Hollywood Vampires concert, the strain was showing. “He was acting a bit out of his mind,” says a witness, “wobbling around, slurring his words, not making sense. He looked you in the eyes but he wasn’t all there.” His hard-partying ways also were detailed in another lawsuit filed recently by two former bodyguards who alleged in bombshell court papers that Johnny put them in “toxic” environments in which they were “forced to protect [ him] from himself,” including one incident in which “illegal substances [were] visible on his face.” And last spring, he reportedly drunkenly attacked a crew member on the set of his new movie City of Lies.
SAD AND LONELY The insider doesn’t think Johnny is ready to admit he has a problem. “He sees himself as the victim of ‘piranhas,’ as he calls them, and that Hollywood is after him,” says the insider. That paranoia has led him to a dark and isolated existence. “He stays up late at night playing music or drinking, sleeps through the day and keeps to himself mostly,” says the source, noting that Johnny reached out to his exes recently for comfort. “Amber blew him off.” Even Vanessa Paradis, his partner of 14 years and mom to his two kids, who supported him publicly through his nasty divorce from Amber, “has been keeping him at arm’s length,” adds the source. Distant or not, all of his loved ones hope he gets help. “But Johnny remains defiant,” says the source. “It may take a complete crash for him to wake up and see how bad things have gotten.” ◼