Lily-Rose Depp Reflects on Childhood With Dad Johnny Depp & Mom Vanessa Paradis: ‘Now I See the Efforts'
Speaking to friend and confidant Natalie Portman for an interview with Interview Magazine, Lily-Rose Depp shared incredibly rare insights into her family life with her ultra-famous parents. The 25-year-old is the firstborn child of actors Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis and had far from a “normal” childhood. (Most kids don’t grow up on a film set pirate ship, after all.) And she wants to give her future kids a far-from-normal childhood too.
The Nosferatu star told Portman she “definitely” wants to be a mom “when that time comes,” and that she’ll do exactly what her parents did: Bring her kid(s) along for the ride.
“I grew up that way, and as much as there were moments where I was like, ‘I want to be at school with my friends,’ now that I’m older, I’m so grateful,” Depp said of living her life on location. And she’s not just giving thanks for all the places she and her 22-year-old brother Jack got to travel.
“[I’m also grateful] for what I now see as the work that they put into making sure that my brother and I had a life in these places that were not ours,” she continued. “At the time I wouldn’t have seen it, but now I see that as conscious efforts that my parents were making to make me and my brother feel at home.”
And despite the professional ease that might have come with living in Hollywood, the Pirates of the Carribean star and Paradis — who split in 2012 — decided to raise Lily-Rose and Jack in France.
“We raise them bilingually anyway, so for them it doesn’t really matter,” Paradis told Belgium’s Weekend Knack magazine in 2007. “Only, in the south of France you can live much more anonymously. And that’s a bliss, especially when the children are still young.”
Perhaps Lily-Rose will also choose a home base in the south of France when she becomes a mom. It can be her quiet and blissful place to raise the little ones as she balances her ever-growing life in the limelight. And based on some sweet comments from 2008, we bet “Grandpa Johnny” (Captain Grandpa Johnny?) would love nothing more than to watch the kiddos while Lily-Rose continues to put her stamp on the industry.
“I could sit there all day and do nothing but watch them grow,” the young dad said, per People. “I’m totally inspired by them.”