Volkswacht Bodensee - Life with Vanessa Paradis was 'bliss', says Johnny Depp

"I have nothing but incredible memories from those days. They gave me time to be a tour father," Depp said in Tokyo.

"Vanessa was doing her shows, you know, various tours. I got to be just daddy for a while," the 62-year-old said.

"Hence the title of her record 'Bliss'. It was bliss."

Depp was together with the actor, singer and model from 1998 to 2012 and they have two children together.

The "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Edward Scissorhands" star has had a string of relationships with other celebrities, including Winona Ryder and Kate Moss.

His brief marriage to Amber Heard, which ended in 2017, provoked the most headlines.

He tried to sue The Sun newspaper in 2020 for libel after it called him a "wife beater", admitting he took drugs but denying any violence. He lost.

Their marriage was raked over in even more lurid detail during a defamation trial in the United States two years later, and this time Depp was successful.

The trial was a lightning rod for opposing sides of the #MeToo debate and Depp remains a toxic figure for many, particularly in the United States.

He lost his role in Harry Potter spin-off series "Fantastic Beasts" but made a comeback with "Jeanne du Barry", which opened the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

Depp said at that festival most of the newspaper stories about him were "fantastically, horrifically written fiction".

He directed last year's biopic of Amedeo Modigliani and appears in the upcoming "Day Drinker" and "Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol".

"What excites me today, what can kind of give me a little bit of a jolt of electricity, is something that surprises me," Depp said in the interview, for which questions had to be approved in advance.

- Exploding brain -

He spoke to AFP at the opening of an exhibition in Tokyo of dozens of his artworks made over three decades, following the show's debut in New York.

"Acting is a form of expression, music certainly the same, and painting, drawing, creating something," Depp told a news conference.

"I find that that is the one true, constant necessity that I must have. Otherwise my brain will explode."

Artwork by Depp in his debut collection "Friends and Heroes" in Britain in 2022 sold out within hours, according to art retailer Castle Fine Art.

Depp, who is also a musician, made three million pounds ($3.6 million at the time) and sold 780 prints through the art house's 37 galleries, media reports said.

"I don't claim to be anything other than at most someone who paints. I am not even a painter really," he said.

C.Bruderer--VB