Here we break down all 37 of Johnny Depp’s tattoos and their meaning. Check out the actor’s ink here.
“To me, it’s like some journal — they all represent different times in my life,” Johnny Depp told The Washington Post in 1995 when discussing his many tattoos. “If you see them, that’s one thing — but if I explain them to you, that would be like walking you through my journal.” Since his first time getting inked — “I was a kid who dropped out of high school, who got his first tattoo at 17, who played rock-and-roll. That was just the chain of events,” he says — Johnny has documented many important moments of his life on his skin. So, take a look at his life by viewing his multiple tattoos. On his upper right arm is Johnny’s first tattoo, which is the statement “Cherokee Tribe” he got inked at 17-year-old. The ink was done to honor his Native American heritage, as his great-grandmother was Cherokee. On Johnny’s left arm, he has a heart with “Betty Sue” written across it. Betsy Sue was the name of Johnny’s mother, who died on May 20, 2016, due to a long illness. However, the ink was done long before her death on his left arm by tattoo artist Johnathan Shaw on May 31, 1988. Johnny’s chest is inked with the name of his and Vanessa Paradis’ firstborn child, daughter Lily-Rose Depp. “My daughter made me understand, helped me understand, why there is life and why I should live, and why I wake up in the morning and why I want to continue this funny road I’m on,” Johny once said to the Philadephia Inquirer (h/t PEOPLE). “I almost feel like I didn’t really have a life before. That I didn’t really live.” Perhaps one of Johnny’s most famous coverups is “WINO FOREVER” on his right arm or the cover of his tattoo for his ex-girlfriend, Winona Ryder, whom he began dating in 1990. The pair met while filming for Edward Scissorhands and quickly fell in love. However, they didn’t last, and Johnny ended up inking over his love mark in 1993 following their split. Johnny has a “suprematism triangle” tattooed on his left shoulder, an adaptation of a painting done by the Russian painter Ilya Chashnik in 1925. The drawing was again inked by Jonathan Shaw in 1993. Suprematism was a Russian offshoot of Cubism and Futurism, according to Britannia, and has been described as “the appropriate means of representation is always the one which gives fullest possible expression to feeling as such and which ignores the familiar appearance of objects.” Johnny’s right forearm boasts a peculiar design: a stitched mouth man with a question mark over its head. The design is the logo of The Brave, a 1997 independent neo-western film that Depp co-wrote and directed. It featured Johnny as a Native American named Raphael who agrees to be murdered as part of a snuff film, directed by Marlon Brando’s character. Johnny’s sparrow tattoo on his right arm is very similar to the one that his Pirates of the Caribbean character, Jack Sparrow, has – except Johnny’s sparrow is flying towards him and now away. That is likely due to Johnny’s love for his son Jack, born in 2002. Supposedly, Johnn said that you “always want him coming back to you.” In addition to the tattoos on his body are numerous ink markers on his hands and fingers. Located on the index finger of his right hand are three rectangles. “I used to doodle these when I was on the telephone,” he told The Washington Post in 1995. “I like the number 3,” Johnny told The Post.
