Johnny Depp: My family is my treasure

Swashbucklers: Johnny Depp with Keith Richards (right)

A man who was intrigued by a widow and her young boys and inspired to write Peter Pan about one of them.

After that it was Willy Wonka in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. Both are, of course, family-safe.

Or, as he puts it: "It's nice to do a film that hopefully my kids will enjoy. They are my foundation."

It's also difficult, looking at Depp the family man, to remember Johnny the serial fiance;. When he was with a woman, he was all about being only with that woman.

When he had a relationship with Winona Ryder, he had her name tattooed on his arm.

Once it was over, he had it changed to "Wino Forever".

Then, of course, there was his turbulent on-off relationship with Kate Moss.

Sometimes he was filling her hotel room with daisies, other times he was throwing the television out of the hotel window.

Now, though, he's marketing gold and he is clear and profound about what caused this transformation: "Meeting Vanessa and fatherhood."

Depp says that the birth of his daughter Lily-Rose, now seven, "was not only the greatest thing that's ever happened - it's the only thing that's ever happened to me.

"I helped give our daughter life and I feel she gave me life.

"Suddenly, you meet your reason to live, meet the future. It was like my birth in a way. I was born that day."

Dramatic words, but he says them almost in a whisper. He has stopped drinking spirits and taking drugs.

"I quit drinking spirits because I couldn't stop.

"I would just keep going until a black screen came down, where you can't see anything any more.

"Trying to numb and medicate myself was never about recreation, it was existing without living.

"Now I have a solid foundation to stand on."

His eyes twinkle some more when he talks about his kids, Lily-Rose and five-year-old Jack.

"They make me happy. Simple, fun things, me and my son zooming around in little cars or making up absurd stories about Barbie dolls who get obsessed about peanut butter."

One can guess at how traumatised he must have been in February when his beloved Lily-Rose was stricken with what is believed to have been E.coli poisoning.

She was taken to hospital in London and there were nine days when the family kept vigil at her bedside.

"It gave us a great scare. It was a very bumpy patch, but she has come through it beautifully and she is now as healthy as she always was."

He is so devoted to Vanessa that even a screen kiss with co-star Keira Knightley upset him.

He says he could never love anybody else.

"I'm old fashioned. It's my Kentucky mentality -seems I can't escape it after all."

Despite his reputation, pre-Vanessa, as a man who loved women, Depp was never a womaniser.