Interview of Vanessa Paradis with Caroline Graham of Night&Day
19 March 2000
Night&Day forms a supplement to The Mail on Sunday published by Associated Newspapers Ltd.

It is an unseasonably cold day in Los Angeles. The storm clouds billow past the window, the rain lashes down, but it's positively clement outside compared with the chill in this £2,500-a-night penthouse hotel suite. And the reason for the drop in temperature? I have just asked Vanessa Paradis if she has ever met Kate Moss.

'Oh you cannot ask me such a thing!' she protests, going rigid, her huge green eyes wide, her toothy smile suddenly frozen. 'There is nothing and no one who can cause us a problem now. No one can take him from me.'

This is Vanessa Paradis's first interview since the 'scandal' of Depp's break-up with supermodel Moss, his union with Paradis and the birth of their daughter in May last year. Until we ventured on to that touchy 'Moss' subject, everything had been going swimmingly.

Vanessa, as you may know, is a Paris-born former teen rock chick, a film star, face of Channel's Coco perfume and 'the woman who tamed Johnny Depp'. Depp, as you will certainly know is the bad-boy star of such films as Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and most recently, Sleepy Hollow. All his movies have done well enough at the box office, yet Depp remains more famous for his adventures off screen. Something about his dissolute charm has appealed to actresses Winona Ryder, Sherilyn Fenn and Jennifer Grey, each of whom he was engaged to in turn, before he embarked on a lengthy high profile romance with Moss.

When it was reported that Vanessa had 'stolen' Johnny from his girlfriend of four years, causing the supermodel to check herself into London's exclusive Priory Clinic, suffering from 'stress and anxiety', Paradis managed to alienate legions of adoring Depp fans. She also angered Moss's supporters, who branded her a scarlet woman and was seen as a brazen traitor to her sex.

Within three months of meeting Johnny, Vanessa was pregnant. When she gave birth to the cherubic Lily-Rose Melody Depp last year, the father declared himself smitten with both mother and daughter. But what of tabloid reports which claimed that while Vanessa was carrying Lily-Rose, he had been seen in London having dinner with Moss? Is Paradis not unnerved by the rumours, by his track record, by his form? She shrugs her tiny shoulders and says bravely: 'I am glad that he had a lot of girlfriends. You know, it's hard for me to answer that, except to say there is the person that everyone sees, and then there is the Johnny I see, who nobody else sees, and that is the person who matters to me. Whenever the paparazzi take a picture of him with some girl, when he is just saying 'Hi' to her, then he is supposed to be with her. Well, that doesn't matter to me. I know who he is, and I know what we have, and I'm secure with that. I know him and I know us. And nothing anyone can say can change what I know to be the truth.'

Just one month before the birth of Lily-Rose, there were suggestions in the press that Depp had been saying 'Hi' to his Sleepy Hollow co-star Christina Ricci, then 18, in London's celebrity hang-out the met Bar. ('They were all over each other like a rash' said one onlooker; 'it was disgusting, he was being terribly indiscreet' said another.) Vanessa, however, takes the attitude that you can't believe everything you read in the papers. So is Johnny still friends with Kate, then? 'Oh, my God, I can't answer that! You have to ask him. I don't even know her. I have never met her.'

Since the break-up, Moss herself has had some very public flings, including a romance with Jesse Wood, son of Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood. Recently, though, she apparently confessed to one friend that she feels she will never get over Depp, the man she described as her 'soul mate'. Asked if she feels guilty about Moss, Paradis looks down quickly and says: 'Next question please'.

With knowing or unknowing irony, she has chosen for our meeting the Chateau Marmont, the Sunset Strip hotel where Depp spent much of his time during his affair with Moss. It is a stone's throw from the actor's nightclub The Viper Room, which, in 1993, was the scene of the death of Depp's close friend River Phoenix, from a mixture of cocaine and heroin. The club also provided the setting for many of the wildest parties thrown by Depp and Moss. 'I very much doubt Vanessa would have chosen that hotel if she'd known Johnny once said he and Kate had probably made love in every room there', commented a friend slyly. 'It was their hangout. But, hey, people change, don't they?'

La Paradis is a fragile creature with translucent skin, who looks far younger than her 27 years. She learned English during a six-month stint in New York in 1992, while she recorded an album with one-time boyfriend Lenny Kravitz.

Now that she is back in Los Angeles to work on a follow-up album, and promote a new film, The Girl on the Bridge, her accent has become a quaint mix of American and English. Her face is innocent of make-up, and she seems so vulnerable that you worry for her. It's almost as if she is stuck in the crossover between child and woman. The 'woman' proudly talks of her baby and her man. The 'child' nervously bites her fingernails, tears the paper label from her bottle of orange squash into tiny shreds and consumes handfuls of Gummi Bears, America's equivalent of Jelly Babies, between sentences.

Her figure is perfect but she has hidden her womanly curves beneath a shapeless, lime green T-shirt, her long legs beneath an ugly, quilted skirt. A pair of bright read tights and clumpy brown suede ankle boots complete the look. And, even by the standards of the girl who managed to make long, lank locks fashionable, this is clearly one of those bad hair days. Her dyed-blonde tresses are dark at the roots.

At the merest hint of searching inquiry, she blushes and becomes flustered. At one particularly probing question, although she smiles sweetly, she asks in dismay, 'How could you ask such a thing?' One can see why Depp is so protective of her.

Still, for all her difficulties down the years, her story so far has been one of success. She achieved fame and fortune early - by the time she was 19, she had had an international number one, 'Joe le Taxi', and was able to buy herself a modest chateau. She has been feted for her beauty and romanced by famous men.

Unlike Depp, who is from a broken home, Vanessa had a stable upbringing. Her parents, Andre and Corinne - partners in an interior-design constancy - have been married for 30 years. Paradis was raised in a family with 'decent' values. Her sister was 12 years older, so Vanessa found herself almost an only child. She hated school, where she felt patronised by her teachers, and was later teased mercilessly about her singing career. She entered the showbusiness world almost by chance, aged 14, when her uncle, Didier Pain, a character actor and record producer, introduced her to a man who had written a song about a cab driver who cruises through Paris. 'Let me try,' begged Vanessa. When 'Joe le Taxi' was released in 1987, it hit number one in 14 countries, and became the first French-language song to make the top three in Britain since Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg's 'Je t'aime… moi non plus' in the Sixties. Vanessa was overwhelmed. Teenage girls everywhere - and their fathers - became Paradis fans overnight. Adoring cabbies from London to Glasgow nicknamed their vehicles 'Joeys' in her honour. From that moment, she never looked back. She enjoyed continuing success as a pop star, switched easily to a career in the cinema, and, to top it all, landed a £300,000 contract to appear as a caged 'bird of paradise' in a famous ad for Coco perfume.

There was also a downside to her celebrity. After the success of 'Joe le Taxi', she was taunted by her schoolmates at the posh Paris Lycee. Her starring role, at 16, in Noce Blanche ('White Wedding'), as the teenage mistress of a middle-aged philosopher, earned her a Cesar (the French Oscar) as best young actress. But the film also inspired the hatred of total strangers, who spat on her in the street and daubed obscene graffiti like 'Die Vanessa' on the walls of her apartment.

Quite why she caused such rabid loathing - or what it says about the psyche of her detractors - would be hard to say. 'Women hated me', she says bewildered. 'People had the image of me as someone completely cretinous. It was a shock. I never understood why. They would write 'slut' on the walls of my house and call me names. I think they must have been jealous, but it was really horrible. It guess people will always be jealous and envious of other people whose lives are lucky. And, you know, my life is very lucky. None of this was planned. I honestly never expected to be famous.'

It was her liaison with Johnny Depp, 10 years her senior, that soon earned her greater fame - or notoriety - on this side of the Atlantic. The 'official' story - the one put out by Depp's slick Hollywood publicity machine - is that the couple met at the bar of the Costes Hotel in Paris in June 1998. Depp himself has often said that he was in the bar during a break in filming Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate, when he saw Vanessa and had a friend invite her over. Other accounts have the star-crossed lovers meeting at a dinner party. Vanessa, though, tells a simpler, more ingenious tale. 'Actually, we knew each other before. We met always with other people. I can't let you inside my private journal, but we knew each other before. We had no plan, it just happened.'

Depp is, she says adoringly, 'Even more gorgeous than you think. On the inside, too. The outside is not something I want to forget about, but it is what is inside that matters. They say I tamed Johnny, but maybe he was ready to be tamed. I don't like to think I made him do anything. We were both waiting for each other. It might sound dumb, but that's how it was. We both had pasts, but when we met each other, we just knew. Yeah he's a beautiful person that all the women are so in love with, but he's a million times more than that in private. And having a baby is 10 times more than what I thought it would be. It is all the things I was expecting and much more that I wasn't.'

In an interview published when Lily-Rose was just two weeks old, Depp told an interviewer: 'Fidelity is fine in theory, but if it runs against your nature, you have to change. I can't be faithful. Half of me loves the idea of having two or three kids and spending every evening watching TV, but the other half of me will always need to stay out all night.' Surely this sort of thing must make Paradis very insecure? Valiantly, and in her idiosyncratic English, she insists: 'He has as much of his life as I have of mine. I am not going to eat it all. I don't want to know it all. Like anyone else's relationship, we talk about the past. We have all made decisions in the past. All I can say is that what happened with us was all very natural and it felt so right. There's no problem between us. There is no taboo'.

Although she was slightly apprehensive beforehand, the birth of Lily-Rose was an occasion of almost transcendent joy. 'I'm so tiny, so I was worried the baby wouldn't come out! I was so lucky from the day I got pregnant. We were so blessed. I felt physically well and had this wonderful person at my side. Johnny cut the umbilical cord. Edward Scissorhands did it! When you have a baby, there are things you'd never expect to do, things you'd never expect the person with you to do. But you do them. I pulled her out myself. The doctor helped her head come out, and her shoulders, and I grabbed her when half of her was still inside. I pulled her out on to my stomach and held her. She was still inside me when I first touched her. We didn't know what the sex was, but it was so great. I held her up, and it was like we were both, 'Oh my God, it's a little girl!' you know how special girls are with their dads. It's so amazing. She can do anything she wants to Johnny. She's got him there', she says, wrapping an imaginary twine around her little finger.

Since the birth of Lily-Rose ('we loved Lily and loved Rose so we put them together'), Vanessa has remained resolutely silent - until now. She has, she says, been enjoying motherhood and spending 'quality time' with her child.

Less circumspect, Depp proclaimed in a spate of interviews for Sleepy Hollow that 'the birth of my daughter gave me life'. He gushed: 'I want everything for my girl. I want white puffy clouds, I want blue skies. I feel like there was a fog in front of my eyes for 36 years. The second she was born, that fog just lifted'. The signs were that the hard-living, hard-partying actor was a reformed man. The sneering star who once trashed a hotel suite and attacked a group of photographers outside a London restaurant while wildly waving a chunk of wood, was positively glowing. He is currently in Los Angeles with Vanessa, Lily-Rose and the nanny. For the past 10 months, the family have split their time between Depp's £1.1 million Paris apartment and a new £500,000 villa near St Tropez.

Vanessa Paradis is happy, she is basking in motherhood. It is clearly something she longed for. Throughout her career - from pop-singing ingenue to Chanel model, to award-winning actress - she has repeated her desire to have a child. 'I always knew it was something I would do', she says now. I don't think it is a great thing for a woman to end her life and not have a child'.

She is clearly besotted with Lily-Rose. 'She's an amazing baby, not just because she's mine. I'm so in love with her. She's just a really special person and so sweet and so gentle. She looks like both of us. She's a weird mix - one day she has my mouth, and the next day she has her daddy's. We are blessed. I believe that there is one special person for you in the world, and there he is in front of me every day.'

Her daughter's middle name, Melody, was inspired by the song 'Melody Nelson', written by the sate Serge Gainsbourg, drunken roue, one-time husband of Jane Birkin and the 'genius' behind the moan-and-groan classic, 'Je t'aime… moi non plus'. Gainsbourg also produced Vanessa's second album. She considers him her mentor and talks lovingly of how she and Depp played schmaltzy Gainsbourg records for their unborn child. 'Melody is from the mutual admiration for Serge Gainsbourg and our favourite song of his. I believe people look after you. I'm sure Serge looks over us. I played his records over and over when I was pregnant. I held the player near my stomach'.

This also explains why she has checked herself into her LA hotel as Madame Nelson. In practical terms, the Chateau Marmont - with all its ghosts of affairs past - is a convenient place to meet. In fact, it may have fewer unsettling associations than Depp's Hollywood Hills mansion where they are staying. It is a home he bought at the height of his affair with Moss and a place the supermodel helped to decorate.

My eye is suddenly drawn to a huge diamond ring on the third finger of Vanessa's left hand. Is it an engagement ring, I wonder? She blushes and looks down again, saying only, 'It's a love ring'. I ask if Depp gave it to her on a 'special' occasion such as the birth of Lily-Rose. She twists the ring in her confusion, a rosy blush colouring her cheeks. 'It didn't need a special occasion. It didn't require a date on the calendar. It's an antique ring, very old… But we are married, no matter what,' she continues. 'We are. Whether there's a bit of paper or not, as far as I'm concerned, I'm married'.

But does she hope that, perhaps, one day they will marry for real? 'I don't know if I want it or not anymore. Before I met him, I loved the idea of marriage and I thought it was beautiful. But I would never have expected that I would have something this enormous or huge in my life. Now marriage would seem like a party. We'll probably have the party one day, if Lily looks at us and says, 'Hey, why aren't you two married?' But it's not going to add anything. We're not against it, it's just not something we talk about. When you have a child it changes you,' Vanessa asserts, 'and it changes what matters. You are not the most important person any more. There is a person who counts above everything, and that's the little child, that angle. She depends on you to live, and no matter how you feel and what is going on, she comes first. You cannot be bought. We are happy. We are together for a long time. People will talk but only time will tell'.

Vanessa's new film, The Girl on the Bridge, has already earned her rave reviews in France for her performance as a suicidal drifter who is saved by a knife-throwing cabaret artist. 'I loved the film and the way it was written,' she says. 'It's surreal, poetic and very French. It has a beautiful rhythm and is very funny. It makes sense, and at the same time doesn't make sense at all. It's like a journey of two people going through a love story'.

A bit like her own story? 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, a bit like me'

Would she consider working on a film with Johnny? 'Yeah, why not?' she says, before adding: 'we have everything we want, but we don't need to involve business in it. It's not that we don't want to do it, but we don't want anything that's going to interfere with our life'.

So is that a yes, then, and maybe, and a no? 'I'm not a very big career woman. I have done well because I've been lucky - I have had no formal singing or acting lessons - and because people have been interested in me. Of course, I didn't just wait on the couch, but I don't know if I deserve it. I could give up everything tomorrow. I love what I do, but Lily-Rose is the centre of my universe. The baby wasn't an accident. We didn't plan it, we had only been together a few months, but we knew what we were doing. We both believe very strongly that she chose us. She makes us feel that. It is like her soul was up there in the sky, and she looked down and she picked us to be her parents. We have friends with babies but we don't do that whole 'Let's hang out with other parents' bit. We don't think about things much. Johnny and I are very natural. We just go with the flow. We're not thinking too deep about everything.'

So will Lily-Rose be the first of many children for the couple? 'I definitely want more. I haven't made a list yet, but, yeah, I want a lot of kids. I don't know how many I can have, but I would like more. I have never had a plan. And I can tell you honestly I would give up the career for a family. Definitely. No questions asked,' she asserts endearingly, trying for the right idiom. 'I should like to have a boy.'

With Johnny as the father? 'Oh course,' says Vanessa. Then she adds, 'I hope'.

Return to interview page Return to Depp home page