Johnny’s and Kates relationship was targeted by the media, as much as his with Winona, as Kate was also naturally a private person. In the midst of defending each others careers and figures, Johnny chose the time to star in another movie, Dead Man. Dead Man was a black-and-white, grainy, indie flick about an accountant who lost his parents and meets Nobody, and many other queer characters in this gunslinging, Acid Western film that garnered rather good reviews. However, after this role, Johnny moved on to take a role that put him in the view that many females fans saw him in. That of the world’s greatest lover, Don Juan DeMarco.
In Don Juan, Johnny plays a man taken in for attempted suicide as he explains his past, and how it led him to think he was indeed Don Juan DeMarco, the world’s greatest lover, in this uber-romantic film which grossed enough to place it roughly #4 on the charts. However, although Johnny’s film was ultra romantic, Johnny’s own personal lovelife was being shot at by the media, there being many cases of reported breakup which he denied. However, it was when he was with Kate, that Johnny was at his wildest.
After wrapping up a small cameo in Cannes Man, Johnny put on his directing gloves and directed “The Brave”, which he starred in. The Brave was a rather short film, about how a man, in order to earn money for his family, signs himself up for a snuff film (torture and death film). After the premiere of that, Johnny immediately busied himself with Donnie Brasco, which co-starred Al Pacino, a crime-drama-thriller which saw Johnny playing a double life. With a new project, Johnny met a person that would become his friend and mentor till his untimely death in 2005: Hunter S. Thompson. Johnny and Hunter immediately bonded, as Johnny played Raoul Duke in Hunter’s book, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.
Around this time, Johnny and Kate split up, quietly. The media was thrown into a slobbering frenzy, yet unsure as to whether Johnny and Kate had split up or not, as both of them led very private lives. Car stickers were printed, “Honk if you’ve been engaged to Johnny Depp!”, referring to his “dog” behavior. Johnny claimed he wasn’t “good enough for her”, and later, he also said that his life basically consisted of “coming home, crying, not sleeping, eating, and a beer.”
Yet soon, almost immediately after breaking up with Kate, Johnny saw a “back.” When the back turned around, he set eyes on Vanessa Paradis, the French singer and model whom would be his partner for the next thirteen years. Johnny had noticably cooled off from his “wild boy” ways after meeting Vanessa, however, he was arrested for the second time in 1999, after brawling with paparazzi after they refused to leave him alone.
Apart from this incident, Johnny’s life ran smoothly, as he filmed The Ninth Gate, a horror movie about a book which could summon the devil, another cameo in L.A Without A Map, and Sleepy Hollow, the film version of the long told, eerie fairy tale, with certain twists, directed again, by his longtime collaborator, Tim Burton. With those steps forward, Johnny prepared for the new millenium as he it upon another huge step of his life, one which would change him forever; fatherhood.