11 feb 2017 año - THE GUARDIAN Oh, how I loved you, Johnny Depp. Now I see the purple-tinted truth

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Now I see the purple-tinted truth

Of course you never see the real person when you fall for someone; you see a self-flattering illusion, and this is triply true with celebrity crushes

BY Hadley Freeman

Of course you never see the real person when you fall for someone; you see a self-flattering illusion, and this is triply true with celebrity crushes

How did I not see it?” Thus cries everyone when the scales of insanity fall from their eyes and they realise that the gorgeous piece of perfection they have been dating, and occasionally making excuses for because other people just didn’t understand their specialness, is actually the literal dregs. Oh God, the way you would say he got into fights on nights out because “he’s so sensitive”? The way you told yourself it was “so cute” that she insisted on getting up on your shoulders at every gig? How could you be so blind? This is the collective cry of womanhood as they gaze upon the latest dispatch from the world of Johnny Depp, and by “womanhood” I mean more specifically me, because Johnny Depp was my boyfriend.

Depp might – possibly – disagree with this description. If we’re going to nitpick here, we’ve never actually met, but I always found personal interaction detrimental to true love. Over the course of three decades, from 21 Jump Street through the Tim Burton years, he was my only celebrity crush, the one I’d see in anything, and I mean genuinely anything; I would wager I am the only person in this country to have seen The Astronaut’s Wife, Nick Of Time and The Ninth Gate. Because it wasn’t just about Johnny’s looks – oh no! I could see his artistic soulfulness, as well as the way he resented that god-given handsomeness and, dammit, I respected him for it. He was basically Edward Scissorhands but with better looks (and hands). Sure, he trashed hotel rooms, but that was because he was fighting against all that Hollywood shallowness. Or something.

And so the excuses went on. Because Depp’s appeal was that he was different from the typical star – the one it was cool to like, the sensitive maverick. What I forgot was, “sensitive maverick” is as much of a Hollywood cliche as “chronic shagger who blames it on sex addiction”.

When Depp’s now ex-wife, Amber Heard, accused him last year of being “verbally and physically abusive”, it was horrible in a shocking way. But the recent lawsuit revelations from his former business managers about the way he managed to blow through his money were just horrible in an embarrassing way. Leaving aside the wince-inducing fast cars, private jets and islands in the Bahamas, it’s the details that really damn: the 70 guitars, because Depp is apparently 16 years old; the “Marilyn Monroe memorabilia”, because Depp is apparently me at 16 years old; $3m on blasting Hunter S Thompson’s ashes from a cannon. $3m! For $2m, Johnny, I’d have built a cannon, fired ol’ Hunter off my own roof and saved you some cash. (An idolisation of Hunter S Thompson is another warning sign I really should have heeded.)

And then, the wine. Depp allegedly spends $30,000 a month on wine, and the only thing more tedious to spend your money on than watches is wine. Wine is the ultimate emperor’s new clothes, because everyone secretly knows that wine, whatever the price, just tastes like bad Ribena. And I suspect Depp is worse than your garden variety wine ponce. At that price, it looks more likely that he is a – shudder – wine collector. Imagine being the kind of person who buys bottles of wine just to look at them. That is not cool; that is called being a hoarder.

Of course you never see the real person when you fall for someone; you see a self-flattering illusion, and this is triply true with celebrity crushes. That I ever believed Depp’s spin is a testament to the tenacity of my inner teenager (seriously, did I not see the purple-tinted glasses?). So now that he has ticked off the “become a parody of yourself”, “have an acrimonious divorce” and “blow your cash on stupid shit” boxes, we can all look forward to the “dodgy plastic surgery” and “massively obese” phases, following in the footsteps of Mickey Rourke, Marlon Brando and many others. Maybe celebrities are just too indulged now, or maybe we know too much about them – which is why I’m increasingly thinking that the safest celebrity to have a crush on is a dead one. Say what you like about those golden age stars, but they’re less likely to kill your buzz by signing up for naff aftershave or espresso adverts.

So long, Johnny. You can now sit on my Shelf of Hideous Mistakes, in between “buying a Friends boxset in 2000” and “dating a 40-year-old who lived with his parents by choice”. I’m now in a sensibly monogamous relationship with Paul Newman, like the mature woman I am.

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