Home is where the art is for Johnny Depp. It can be revealed that the movie star, who has been in the UK for the past six months, has been renting both a townhouse and an art studio in London’s West End and is now throwing himself into his sideline as an artist.
The studio, which is in the heart of Soho, seems to be inspiring the 61-year-old actor to unleash another side of his creative nature.
Depp stepped out for dinner at the weekend at Cipriani in Mayfair, smoking a cigarillo and sporting shoes with what looks to be a custom paint job, indicating his current passion for art.
The Pirates Of The Caribbean star has painted for years, but his first foray into the world of commercial art came in 2022, when he raised £3 million in a few hours by selling prints from his debut art collection.
The prints featured four people who inspired him — Rolling Stone Keith Richards, actress Liz Taylor, actor Al Pacino and singer Bob Dylan — and were embellished with ‘characteristic freehand flourishes’.
Johnny Depp has been in the UK for the past six months renting both a townhouse and an art studio in London’s West End
The actor hasn’t abandoned the day job. He has been busy editing the movie Modi, about the artist Modigliani — a passion project of his
The website of his gallery, Castle Fine Art, crashed due to the volume of interest from his fans, alerted by a post to his 27 million followers on Instagram.
At the time he said: ‘I’ve always used art to express my feelings and to reflect on those who matter most to me, like my family, friends and people I admire. My paintings surround my life, but I kept them to myself and limited myself. No one should ever limit themselves.’
He’s not limiting himself any more. Last summer, another set of prints were sold by the same gallery over a 13-day period. Called ‘Five’, the pieces showed Depp as he approached the fifth year of his legal battle with former wife Amber Heard, and were based on a picture of him taken during a shoot for his Sauvage fragrance campaign with Dior.
Meanwhile, Depp’s day job has not been abandoned. He has been busy editing the movie Modi, about the artist Modigliani — a passion project in which he does not star. It ought to pop up on the festival circuit later this year.
He has also agreed to play Satan in a forthcoming film, The Carnival At The End Of Days, for friend and former Monty Python star Terry Gilliam. The picture, an apocalyptic comedy, starts shooting next January.
His last role was portraying King Louis XV in Jeanne Du Barry, which premiered at Cannes in 2023.
Two weeks ago, Depp celebrated the birthday of his late close friend, the guitarist Jeff Beck, with Beck’s widow Sandra. She hosted a party for her husband’s friends at the Gibson Garage off Oxford Street, and Johnny played guitar.
White Lotus star says so long Sicily, hello Martha’s Vineyard
Meghann Fahy will return to the White Lotus milieu of the super-rich in aforthcoming Netflix series, Sirens.
This time Fahy, who played the dissatisfied wife of a tech bro in the second season of White Lotus (and met her partner, Leo Woodall, during shooting in Sicily), is a social worker from Buffalo, New York, who travels to Martha’s Vineyard to spend time with her sister, the personal assistant of a highly strung billionaire’s wife.
Meghann Fahy (pictured) is set to star alongside Julianne Moore and House Of The Dragon’s Milly Alcock in a forthcoming Netflix series, Sirens
She formerly starred in White Lotus alongside Theo James(pictured) in the hit show
The show is a comedy and a satire about wealth. Julianne Moore will play the high-maintenance rich woman, while House Of The Dragon’s Milly Alcock plays her PA (and Fahy’s sister).
Writer Molly Smith Metzler said of the series (which began life as a play called Elemeno Pea): ‘Class is something that I write about consistently, because I think it’s fascinating. One of the things that shocked me is that the richest woman at the yacht club in Martha’s Vineyard was also the biggest piece of white trash.
‘Class has nothing to do with income. It hasnothing to do with net worth.’
She added: ‘Privilege itself doesn’t interest me as much as the sacrifice we make to get that privilege.’
Blind comedian Chris McCausland is claiming credit for MI5’s recruitment drive for visually impaired spies.
McCausland said he applied for a job in intelligence and went through several interviews before being told: ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but your disability does strike me as being somewhat of a security risk.’
Blind comedian Chris McCausland is claiming credit for MI5’s recruitment drive for visually impaired spies. Pictured on This Morning
‘I said: ‘What’s more undercover than a blind fella meeting his mate in the pub for a pint?’
‘And the guy went: ‘Good point.’ And he wrote something down.
‘I’ve always wondered whether he wrote: ‘More blind people.’
Sherlock creator Steven Moffat is itching to get back into the crime-solving business — and he’s already got a sleuth in mind: Bently Cassock, useless agent of TV anchor Douglas Bellowes, in his new show Douglas Is Cancelled.
Moffat enthused: ‘Simon Russell Beale is brilliant as Bently and I’d love to spin him off into a drama where he solves old crimes. I’d do it tomorrow, if I got the chance.’
The Scottish writer, who is also working on the Christmas episode of Doctor Who, said he wrote extra scenes for Beale after being bowled over by his performance as the old-school theatrical agent in the ITV show.
‘I developed a little bit of a crush on Sir Simon during filming,’ he admitted.
‘He may, on occasions, have been quite alarmed by how close I was standing to him.’
Moffat, 62, co-created Sherlock in 2010 with Mark Gatiss. The four acclaimed series, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Conan Doyle’s detective, ran to 2017.
These boots were made for hawking
Are music festivals turning into bling-and-plugs ‘red carpet’ events? I ask because Anya Taylor-Joy, the fashion-involved 28-year-old star of The Queen’s Gambit and Mad Max movie Furiosa, used her trip to Glastonbury at the weekend to further not one but two commercial endorsement deals.
First up she and her friend, the model Cara Delevingne, stepped out in matching £115 Sorel Out N About boots — a new design which was not, at the time, on sale in the UK.
Anya Taylor-Joy stomping around Glastonbury with friend and model Cara Delevingne. The pair donned matching £115 Sorel Out N About boots
Taylor-Joy, who is a Tiffany ambassador, also sported a £4,475 gold Elsa Peretti ‘bone’ ring, which she plugged on her Instagram.
Meanwhile Friday’s headliner Dua Lipa (also in Tiffany’s stable of ambassadors) was dripping with diamonds on stage.
And the singer also wore a £7,325 diamond cross necklace and £6,245 diamond ring (as well as diamond studs in her ears) while wandering around Worthy Farm with actor boyfriend Callum Turner.
The audience at the BET (Black Entertainment Television) awards in LA this week were plainly horrified when O.J. Simpson featured in the In Memoriam segment.
The disgraced NFL star turned actor, who died in April, was acquitted of killing his estranged wife and her friend in 1995, but jailed 12 years later for armed robbery and kidnapping.
Not even the author knows how Gareth’s story will end
Whither Gareth Southgate? Not in real life, where he seems certain to step down as England manager pretty shortly. But in the BBC’s forthcoming TV series based on the hit play, Dear England.
The Corporation announced in February they planned a four-part series based on the National Theatre’s Olivier award-winning production, with Joseph Fiennes reprising his role as Southgate.
The play, written by James Graham (Sherwood, This House, Ink) and directed by Almeida boss Rupert Goold, covered Southgate’s struggles, strategies (and natty suits and vests) at the 2018 World Cup in Russia, the 2020 Euros and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
It also touched on themes of racism and masculinity.
Joseph Fiennes (pictured) will be reprising his role as Gareth Southgate for a four-part series based on the National Theatre’s Olivier award-winning production
Despite receiving rave reviews when it opened last summer, a few dissenting voices dared to suggest that the play could be ‘overhyping a gifted man who still hasn’t taken home any actual silverware’.
That analysis seems more relevant a year on, as England make stuttering progress in the Euros once again. And whatever the outcome of the current tournament, Graham is planning to change his play to take these mixed feelings into account.
He says: ‘The story is not yet done and I have no control over it. It’s a bit sad because I liked the ending we had. The universe gave me this beautiful moment where Harry Kane missed a penalty in the World Cup quarter-final in 2022, mirroring Gareth Southgate’s fate in 1996.’
The TV show is expected to go into production next year. The play, meanwhile, will return to the National in the spring, with an ‘updated version’, which will then move to The Lowry in Salford.
Singer Ed Sheeran loves the water — he built a huge pond at his home in Suffolk. But he admits that the first time he went fishing, in 2013, he was so clueless that he didn’t put any bait on his hook.
‘I lived on a lake in Nashville and I bought a rod from Walmart,’ he recalled.
‘I’d never been fishing before. I threw the line in and after about an hour my mate came up and was like: ‘Have you put bait on it?’
‘I didn’t know you were meant to do that! I just assumed the fish would swim past and catch the hook.’
Ed Sheeran has revealed that he lived on a lake in Nashville and bought a rod from Walmart but had no idea how to fish
Name that tune, Chef! Bear cast cook up a party in the kitchen
Lots of fun during the filming of the finale of The Bear season three which — no spoilers — includes a party.
But Lionel Boyce, who plays pastry chef Marcus, found himself out of step with the rest of the cast. He said: ‘Even though we were still in the middle of filming, it felt like the last day of school. There was a relief and release.
Lionel Boyce, who plays pastry chef Marcus (pictured) said he was bewildered when the cast burst out in song
‘It was late at night, and it was very loose, and there was music playing (the 1993 hit Laid by James). I didn’t even know that song.
‘They told us: ‘OK, yell out the song!’ and everyone starts singing. And I’m like: ‘What is this song that everyone knows except me?’
To be fair to Boyce, who was a member of LA hip-hop group Odd Future before turning to acting, he was only two when the tune was released.
But as well as being an international hit for Manchester band James, Laid also featured in the American Pie movies.
