JOHNNY DEPP

Why would a director choose me? I can only say that hopefully, there’s something underneath my look or image that maybe hasn’t come out yet. I want to try to do things differently. I want to experiment. I want to express different things at some point. It’s just the beginning for me. I’m not even born yet as an actor. I’m still trying. I’m still pushing. I hope I never stop pushing. I don’t ever want to get to a place where I feel satisfied. I think if I do that, it will be over.

KEANU REEVES

I was in Toronto and had come to a point of doing most of what I could do there. The theater community and I weren’t really ready for each other. I was 19 and full of energy and I would go to the auditions and they’d say, “Great, great, maybe next year.” I was tired of playing the “Best Friend”, “Thug #1”, and the “Tall Guy”. I’d gotten an audition for a movie of the week for Disney called YOUNG AGAIN, where I was reading for “Best Friend #1”, but the director liked me and had me read for the lead. In LA, I met Hildy Gottlieb at ICM. She told me, “When you get your act together…come and see me.” Eventually I got the job and a green card and I was legal. I got in my 1969 Volvo and drove out here with $3,000. I stayed at my stepfather’s and proceeded to go into the darkness that is LA.

ROBERT DOWNEY, JR.

I moved out on my own six years ago. I lived on Ninth Avenue and 52nd Street in New York City. There were no windows that you could see out of. I just remember it being a really depressing, claustrophobic place that I actually had a lot of fun in. I was a busboy at Central Falls Restaurant in Central Park. I don’t think it was tough monetarily. As a matter of fact, it was the best thing that ever happened to me when my dad said, “I’ve carried you for too long. You’re 18. Don’t call me up to even ask me for a dollar. I don’t care if you call me to tell me you are hungry.” I remember that was a point of transition where I decided, “Fuck, I really have to grow up now.”

BRAD PITT

My coming out here is the classic story, but it was such an adventure it was cool. I had $300 to my name. My car, a dented silver Datsun, which I named “Run Around Sue”, was loaded up. I had my luggage high up to the back of my head and all the way to the top on the side and the passenger seat, where I couldn’t see behind me, and just had a little room to shift. My philosophy was, all I need to see is forward. I’m heading west and that’s all I need to see. I was such a dork. I just remember saying, “Yeah!” every time I would drive past a state line. I was so excited. And then I pulled into town and had my first meal at McDonald’s and thought, “Now what do I do?”

COURTENEY COX

I hated modeling. I wasn’t tall or beautiful enough to become a real model. Once I got my first commercial, I quit print. I started taking acting lessons and speech lessons to lose my southern accent. My real break came when I got the Bruce Springsteen “Dancing in the Dark” video. Brian DePalma cast me over a couple hundred other girls. He wanted someone who could look surprised when Bruce pulled her out of the audience, take after take, and that was me.