My cure for writer's block is to blog about Art, Love, Romance, Books, Technology, Media, Politics, Writing, Culture, Religion, and Society with Humor, Style, and a little bit of Poetry.
Born John Christopher Depp in Owensboro, Kentucky, on June 9, 1963, Johnny Depp was raised in Florida. He dropped out of school at age 15 in the hopes of becoming a rock musician. He fronted a series of garage bands including The Kids, which once opened for Iggy Pop. Depp got into acting after a visit to Los Angeles, California, with his former wife, Lori Anne Allison (Lori A. Depp), who introduced him to actor Nicolas Cage. He made his film debut in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). In 1987 he shot to stardom when he replaced Jeff Yagher in the role of undercover cop Tommy Hanson in the popular TV series 21 Jump Street (1987).
Johnny's family has lived in Kentucky for many generations, and many of his antecedents have lived in the United States, in general, since the 1600s. His ancestry includes English, as well as Irish, Scots-Irish, Scottish, Welsh, French, Dutch, Belgian (Flemish), and German. Also, in 2013, researchers for Ancestry.com established that Johnny has remote African ancestry; they traced his lineage back to Elizabeth Key, a biracial woman, born c. 1630, who was the first woman of African ancestry to successfully sue to emancipate herself from slavery in the North American colonies (she emancipated her son, as well). Johnny has frequently stated that he believes that he has Cherokee, or other recent Native American, ancestry, although this ancestry has never been verified by genealogists. Asked the origin of his last name by James Lipton on Inside the Actors Studio, Depp stated, perhaps jokingly, that his name means "idiot" in German.
