Johnny Depp Questions Fan Obsession With Personal Life in Rare Interview (Flashback)

We happen to be doing a story about how bad it gets with stars. Did it get to the point where people were going through your trash and that sort of a thing to dig up dirt on you? Yeah, apparently for a little while there. There was a time when people, whoever they were, were fascinated with what I might be throwing away into the garbage can. It just happens. I don't know. I've never really been fascinated with anyone's trash before. Some people, you know. What can you do? Do you know what they were looking for? Notes or things about your personality or something? Adult diapers, maybe. I don't know. I'm not sure what they were looking for. What's really weird about that, how the media thing gets stretched out into this really absurd, surreal thing is, like I said, you're an actor and you're trying to do your job. There's a ton of them out there who are trying to do their job, get by and do the best they can, make some money. And then suddenly you reach a certain level in your career and this sort of wheel starts spinning about your past and your future and your present. Who were you with last night and what club and how many people you quite possibly bumped uglies with or something. It's like suddenly this thing starts happening. It's not about the work anymore. It's not about films. It becomes this kind of showboat thing. This sort of society of ambulance chasers who are fascinated with your personal life or what's inside your brain and things like that. And to me that's really frightening because there's only a couple of actors that I can think of that I would be fascinated to find out what their thoughts are. Marlon Brando is one of them. He's obviously an amazing actor and he's possibly the greatest. But what fascinates me about Marlon Brando is his brain and his thoughts. But to become fascinated with the personal life or the thoughts and opinions of a person who pretends for living, who lies for money, is beyond me. So what do you do then? How do you deal with all this stuff? Lay low. Just kind of lay low. I'm not a real function oriented person. I don't do well at functions or the Hollywood party scene. I don't go there so much. I just kind of stay home or wander a bit. Tell us about your favorite cigars, your fascination. Why is this something that is part of you? I'm a smoker. It's not a popular thing to be in 1993. But I don't know. Cigars somehow just seem great. As soon as you light it, you instantly relax. I don't know what it is. My favorite cigars, I can't say. There's so many great ones. There's some real nice Cuban cigars. It's not a false, it's a real thing. When people say Cuban cigars are the finest, you think, look, cigar is cigar, tobacco is tobacco. No, it's wrong. Cuban cigars are the stuff. My favorite, maybe Cohiba Lancero. That was Castro's cigar. That was his favorite cigar before he quit. To people who don't smoke, what would you liken cigar smoking to? Is it like a fine wine? Depending on the cigar you're smoking, I would be comparing it to maybe a warm cognac. Just something like that. Suddenly, everything starts to just kind of calm down. Sort of sink into the old lazy boy. How did you get into the cigars? Did somebody introduce you? Because if someone walked up to me and handed me a rolled up pair of socks, I would probably smoke it. I'm one of the few and proud smokers who really love smoke. If I could have another mouth grafted onto my face to smoke more, I would do it. I have lung power. The one gift I have in this world is I have incredibly strong lungs. Sometimes I smoke two, three cigarettes at a time. You can hear the American Cancer Society phones ringing right now. The publicists are going, get this. Well, you don't have to use it. I mean, it's just sort of there. You're being honest, you know. Yeah. Unfortunately, I'm a big smoker. Where are they? Oh yeah, here they are.