Johnny Depp Johnny Depp John Christopher Depp II (born June 9, 1963) is an American actor, producer, and musician. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and has won the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series "21 Jump Street", becoming a teen idol. Depp has challenged himself by playing larger-than-life roles, including a supporting role in Oliver Stone's 1986 Vietnam War film "Platoon" and the title character in the 1990 romantic dark fantasy "Edward Scissorhands". He later found box office success in the adventure film "Sleepy Hollow" (1999),
Johnny Depp Wells), a waitress, and John Christopher Depp, a civil engineer. Depp is of mostly English ancestry, with some Dutch, Belgian, and French. He is descended from a French Huguenot immigrant (Pierre Dieppe, who settled in Virginia around 1700) and from colonial freedom fighter Elizabeth Key Grinstead (1630-1665), daughter of a British nobleman and an indentured African woman. Depp moved frequently during his childhood. He and his siblings lived in more than 20 different places, eventually settling in Miramar, Florida in 1970. Depp's parents divorced in 1978 when he was 15. His mother married Robert Palmer, whom Depp has called "an