Once one of Hollywood’s biggest stars and notorious bad boys, Johnny Depp is now a sad shell of his former self, according to a damning new profile piece in Rolling Stone.
And at least part of Depp’s current misfortunes can be traced back to an extravagant purchase during a trip to Singapore.
Journalist Stephen Rodrick spent 72 hours with the 55-year-old actor in his home, and the picture that he paints of Depp is troubling. The man who once commanded millions of dollars through the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and a number of (tiresome) Tim Burton flicks is now a nocturnal hermit weighted down by lawsuits and debts, with only a shady lawyer as his closest confidante. Ultimately, Depp appears to be lonely and broken, relying on copious amounts of wine and weed to escape from the reality that he’s way past his prime.
But how did Hollywood’s highest-paid actor (from June 2009 to June 2010, according to Forbes) become so broke? According to details of the lawsuit revealed in the Rolling Stone piece, it seems that Depp apparently squandered it all in a lavish lifestyle of extreme excess. The actor’s former business manager accused Depp of being a spoiled brat with no impulse control and a lifestyle that cost “$2 million a month to maintain, which he simply could not afford.”
He spent US$7,000 on a used couch from the set of Keeping Up With the Kardashians for his daughter. He spent US$75 million on 14 residential properties. He kept a sound engineer on a payroll to feed him his lines through an earpiece while filming. He spent US$30,000 on wine (Depp says he spent far more, actually). He spent US$200,0000 a month on private air travel. He spent US$3 million to shoot the ashes of his idol Hunter S. Thompson (who Depp portrayed in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) into the sky.
Compared to all that, his shopping spree in Singapore seems like chump change. Depp bought US$108,000 in suits while on a trip to Singapore, according to a source who was here.
Some digging will find that it was in 2015 that Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard traveled incognito from Bangkok to Singapore via the Eastern & Oriental Express train. The two split a year later following allegations of Depp’s physical abuse.
“I was as low as I believe I could have gotten,” Depp said of the period when he divorced Heard.
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