Johnny Depp poses during a photocall for the film “Minamata” screened in the Berlinale Special Gala at the 70th Berlinale film festival in Berlin. Image: John MacDougall/AFP
Hollywood actor Johnny Depp admitted to letting his daughter try his own stash of marijuana, stating that it was “trustworthy and good quality” and that he was “being a responsible parent.”
Depp made the statement in a court in the United Kingdom while he was being questioned in his libel trial against tabloid newspaper The Sun, Evening Standard reported yesterday, July 7.
The actor is suing The Sun’s publisher News Group Newspapers and its executive editor, Dan Wootton, for an article that called him a “wife beater” when he was married to actress Amber Heard.
Depp explained he gave his daughter Lily-Rose, now 21, marijuana when she was 13 because he worried she would experiment with drugs with strangers. He said that he discussed the decision with her mother, Vanessa Paradis.
Depp also shared that he handed his own marijuana because “I don’t want a 13-year-old going into some sort of paranoid tailspin. I knew the marijuana I had myself, that I smoked myself, is trustworthy and good quality.”
He said his daughter was 12 when she was passed a joint at a party, to which he gave her advice.
“I said, ‘Listen sweetheart, if you are at a party and someone hands you the joint, take the joint from the person and pass it to the next person. Please don’t experiment with drugs with people you don’t know,’” he recalled.
He told his teenage daughter to approach him when she was “ready.”
“‘I don’t want your first experience to be with people you don’t know, taking things you don’t know, that you don’t trust,’” he said.
“It’s a safety issue, it’s a father worried about his daughter in this kind of situation, when she came and said ‘we are ready.’”
Depp explained he wanted his daughter to be honest with him and trust him.
“I know the most important thing for a child if you are going to do something like that—I would rather have them be honest with me and me be honest with them, so she doesn’t go out there and do things and hide them from me,” he said.
“I want her to trust me. If my daughter says she was ready, she was ready,” he stressed.
“I wanted to make sure the settings were perfection, put on family TV, fill the refrigerator with ice cream, fill the freezer, make a situation where the experience is as pleasant as possible.”
He told barrister Sasha Wass QC, “If this is wrong in your eyes, I appreciate what you think but I was raising a daughter and I was being a responsible parent so far as I’m concerned.” Niña V. Guno /ra
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