In a recent interview with Elle, Lily-Rose Depp declined to comment on the latest headlines about her father Johnny Depp, and his legal dispute with ex Amber Heard.
"I feel really entitled to my secret garden of thoughts," she said, noting that the issues in her father's life are "private" and "personal" even though the media attention has made them become "not so personal."
Johnny, 59, filed a $50 million defamation lawsuit against Heard, 36, in 2019 after claiming her 2018 Washington Post op-ed included domestic abuse accusations that hurt his career. Heard countersued for $100 million in January 2021, and the trial began in April 2022. Two months later, the trial ended with Depp awarded $15 million in damages and Heard awarded $2 million in compensatory damages.
For her part, Depp just wants to be defined by her work instead of her father or any other man in her life.
"I also think that I'm not here to answer for anybody, and I feel like for a lot of my career, people have really wanted to define me by the men in my life, whether that's my family members or my boyfriends, whatever," Depp said in Elle. "And I'm really ready to be defined for the things that I put out there."
The actor, 23, is set to star as fictional celebrity Jocelyn in HBO's upcoming series "The Idol," co-created by Abel Tesfaye (aka The Weeknd), Reza Fahim, and Sam Levinson. Levinson also created the network's award-winning series "Euphoria," which skyrocketed actors Zendaya and Sydney Sweeney into a new stratosphere of stardom.
As reported in Elle, Depp is a private person whose parents tried to shield her from the spotlight as much as possible (her mother is singer, model, and actor Vanessa Paradis). This protective move has influenced her adult life, too.
"I'm not here to give myself to the world to be eaten alive," Depp said.
Yet she admitted that artists want to make work that connects to people, which can sometimes create blurry boundaries. "But then it also comes with this thing where people feel like they know you, even though they don't."
Depp said that when she's recognized in public, she worries people might think she's "really weird or rude" when she's actually just "really shy and kind of anxious."
"That's why I like to do my work and put as much of my heart into it as I can and then retreat into my real life and just be a normal person," she continued.
She's also unfazed by the fact that she's called a "nepo baby" because she thinks the internet cares a lot more about it than decision-makers in Hollywood.
"I just hear it a lot more about women, and I don't think that it's a coincidence," she said.
