Johnny Depp Guitar Hero Johnny Depp began playing in various garage bands. His first band was in honor of his girlfriend, Meredith. A year after his parents' divorce, Depp dropped out of high school to become a rock musician. As he once explained on Inside the Actors Studio, he attempted to go back to school two weeks later, but the principal told him to follow his dream of being a musician. He played with The Kids, a band that enjoyed modest local success. The Kids set out together for Los Angeles in pursuit of a record deal, changing their name to Six Gun Method but the group split up before ever signing a record deal. Johnny Depp subsequently collaborated with the band Rock City Angels and co-wrote their song "Mary", which appeared on Rock City Angels' debut for Geffen Records titled Young Man's Blues. On December 24, 1983, Depp married Lori Anne Allison, a makeup artist and sister of his band's bass player and singer. During Depp's marriage, his wife worked as a makeup artist while he worked a variety of odd jobs, including a telemarketer for ink pens. Later, his wife introduced him to actor Nicolas Cage, who advised Depp to pursue an acting career. In 1985, Depp and Allison divorced. After his marriage ended, Depp dated and was engaged to Sherilyn Fenn (whom he met on the set of the 1985 short film Dummies). Career Television Depp starred in a lead role on the Fox TV television series, 21 Jump Street, which premiered in 1987. Depp accepted this role because he was not getting much work in the business and wanted to work with actor Frederic Forrest, who inspired him. Later in the season, Depp's long time friend Sal Jenco joined the cast as a semi-co-star as the janitor named Blowfish. The series' success turned Depp into a popular teen idol during the late 1980s. He found the teen-idol status irritating, noting that he felt "forced into the role of product" and that it was "a very uncomfortable situation and I didn't get a handle on it and it wasn't on my terms at all. Johnny Depp promised himself that after his contract on the series expired, he would only appear in films that he felt were right for him. Film roles Depp's first major role was in the 1984 horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street, playing the heroine's boyfriend and one of Freddy Krueger's victims. In 1986, he also appeared in a secondary role as a Vietnamese-speaking private in Oliver Stone's Platoon. Depp abandoned his teen idol image in 1990 with the quirky title role in the Tim Burton film, Edward Scissorhands. The film's success began a long association with Burton. Depp, an avid fan and long-time friend of writer Hunter S. Thompson, played a version of Thompson (named Raoul Duke) in 1998's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, based on the writer's pseudobiographical novel of the same name. Depp also accompanied Thompson as his road manager on one of the author's last book tours Johnny Depp contributed a personal foreword to Gonzo: Photographs by Hunter S. Thompson, a posthumous visual biography of the writer's legacy published by ammobooks.com. A close friend of Thompson's, Depp paid for most of Thompson's memorial event, complete with fireworks and the shooting of Thompson's ashes by a cannon, in Aspen, Colorado, where Thompson lived. Depp wearing a mustache and goatee similar to the style used in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Depp's film characters have been described by the press as "iconic loners," and Depp has noted that this period of his career was full of "studio defined failures" and films that were "box office poison," stating that he believes film studios never "understood" the films he appeared in and did not know how to market them properly. John Depp has also said that he specifically chose to appear in films that he found personally interesting, rather than those he thought would succeed at the box office. Johnny Depp Videos on this channel include johnny depp guitar Johnny Depp Interview Johnny Dep...