ALISON BOSHOFF: Is Johnny Depp nonetheless in love with Vanessa Paradis?

He didn’t paint her from life… that would have been impossible, not to mention awkward.

After all, she lives in Paris with her husband of six years while he drifts between a number of homes — and lady friends — in Europe and America.

But Johnny Depp‘s striking depiction of his former partner Vanessa Paradis as The Empress, released for sale last week, is nevertheless a profound expression of his enduring love for her and their complicated relationship.

It is a love which has lasted beyond their split 12 years ago, his disastrous 15-month marriage to actress Amber Heard and, ultimately, her ongoing and happy marriage to Samuel Benchetrit, a French actor, writer and director.

Depp, 61, still calls Paradis, 51, ‘magnificent’ and mused last week: ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more beautiful woman.’ This from a man who dated Kate Moss.

Could it be he regrets splitting from the devoted mother of his children? His praise for her is all the more surprising when you remember how, 11 years ago, while in the first flush of lust with Heard, he was caught referring to his ex as a ‘French extortionist’ and a ‘c***’ in a message to his friend Elton John. 

Those messages were released during his U.S. legal battle with Heard, after she described herself as a ‘victim of abuse’ and he successfully sued her for defamation. He had previously lost a defamation claim in the UK after The Sun newspaper called him a ‘wife beater’.

Now Depp has only the fondest things to say about the actress who was by his side for more than a decade and has never said a bad word about him.

So why did they split and how have they rebuilt their relationship? And what do Paradis and her husband make of Depp’s fond mooning after all these years? One source says the two ‘will always have a mutual love and respect for one another, especially as they share children together’.

Paradis was a source of comfort to Depp in his two legal actions following the end of his marriage. She also, crucially, released a public statement to support him, telling the High Court that the ‘wife beater’ depicted by Heard was not at all the man she knew so well. Further, they have continued to spend time as a family at the South of France home they bought and renovated in 2001.

This has continued even though their children Lily-Rose and Jack are now 25 and 22. The retreat, an entire small village near St Tropez, has become something of a safe harbour for them all — Samuel included. Everyone zooms about on golf carts and both Depp and Jack are forever pranging them.

It’s not clear whether model and beautician Yulia Vlasova — said to be the star’s new girlfriend — will score an invitation this summer. I’m told Yulia, 28, might have ‘pushed a lot of information out there… making it seem they were more serious than they were’.

Paradis and Depp first met in an LA nightclub when he was dating Moss. Paradis, who shot to fame aged 14 with the hit song Joe Le Taxi, said: ‘I remember perfectly the first time. He just shook my hand and I thought, ‘OK, that’s it’. He didn’t only look good, everything was good. He was so sweet, so different … I just knew.’

Cupid struck Depp a few years later in 1998 when he was filming in Paris and spotted Paradis drinking with friends in the Hotel Costes. He recalled: ‘She was wearing a dress with an exposed back and I saw that back and that neck, and then she turned around and I saw those eyes, and boom! My life as a single man was done.’

They moved in together in Notting Hill and she fell pregnant within months. Lily-Rose was born in May 1999. John Christopher Depp III (Jack) was born in 2002 in France where the family now spent most of their time.

The question of marriage was raised by interviewers, but both said they didn’t feel the need. Vanessa told Elle magazine: ‘I’m more married than anybody can be. Maybe one day, but it’s something I can really do without.’

There was a crisis in 2007 when Lily-Rose suffered kidney failure and was treated at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital. Depp was so grateful for her care that he visited that Christmas as his Pirates Of The Caribbean character, Jack Sparrow, and was said to have donated £1million to it.

R umours about problems in the relationship began when Depp took a role opposite Angelina Jolie in The Tourist in 2009. Sources reported that Paradis was uneasy about them working together.

Jolie had, of course, previously tempted Brad Pitt away from Jennifer Aniston and rather tactlessly said she’d had a crush on Depp since he played Edward Scissorhands. Depp said her beauty was ‘like a poem’.

But Paradis had no cause to worry about Jolie. For 2009 was the year Depp met Amber Heard, while filming The Rum Diary, and fell for her like a ton of bricks.

He confessed during court testimony in 2022 that he’d started to develop feelings for Heard on set: ‘During the scene in the shower, where we kissed, I felt something I shouldn’t have, because at that time she had her partner and I had Vanessa.’

Later, they spent an evening together, sharing ‘a glass of wine and kisses’ in his dressing room. In 2010, Paradis hinted she and Depp were having troubles when she told an interviewer: ‘If we want our relationship to continue, we must give each other space, allow each other to go off on our own and trust each other.’

By 2012, however, the trust was broken and Depp and Heard were officially a couple. Paradis took the split with characteristic grace, saying: ‘Nothing is ever for sure.’

It was reported that she asked for — and got — a cool $100million settlement. Depp was clearly financially stung, hence the x-rated rant to Elton in 2013, in which he also claimed his children had ‘fallen head over heels with Amber’ while expressing concern that Paradis would attempt to ‘brainwash them against her’.

Clearly, he was crazy about the then 26-year-old Heard. They married in 2015. Lily-Rose, far from enamoured with her stepmother, skipped the wedding.

As we now know, the marriage was a miserable affair, with conflicts over drinking and drugs and a horrible incident in Australia during which the top of his finger was severed and he wrote ‘Easy Amber’ on a mirror in blood.

In 2016, Heard filed for divorce, accusing him of verbal and physical abuse. She also obtained a restraining order against the actor which was later withdrawn in a settlement. The same year, Paradis met Samuel on the set of the film Chien, which he directed. They married in 2018 in a discreet ceremony, with just 20 guests, including Lily-Rose and Jack, in a small schoolhouse town hall in Saint-Simeon.

Whatever Depp was feeling that day, he never said publicly. His divorce from Heard had been finalised in 2017 then, in 2020, the lawsuits started.

Paradis was one key person who was willing to stand up for him at this time. In a witness statement she said she had known Depp for more than 25 years and that the allegations were ‘nothing like the true Johnny I have known’.

She added: ‘I can say he was never violent or abusive to me.’

Their children continue to spend time with Paradis and Samuel at their house on the outskirts of Paris, as well as holidays together in St Tropez.

The closest Depp came to admitting regret over losing Paradis, was during a Rolling Stone interview in 2015. ‘Relationships are very difficult,’ he said. ‘Especially in the racket I’m in because you’re constantly away or they’re away… you play it out until it goes, one thing leads to another. It doesn’t stop the fact that you care for that person and they’re the mother of your kids, and you’ll always know each other, and you’re always gonna be in each other’s lives because of those kids. You might as well make the best of it.’

And with ‘the most beautiful woman he’s ever known’, there at the end of his paintbrush for ever, his love for her continues.