Johnny Depp Unveils His Debut Self-Portrait, Titled ‘Five’: ‘Not the Most Comfortable Thing’

Johnny Depp previously made over $3.6 million when he released his debut art collection ‘Friends & Heroes’ in 2022

Johnny Depp is back with new artwork.

On Thursday, Castle Fine Art debuted 60-year-old Depp’s self-portrait, titled “Five,” which is set to be sold starting today for 13 days only — a number that a press release described as “significant to the artist.”

The portrait is painted in the style of Depp’s previous “Friends and Heroes” art series and was inspired by a photograph Depp took at a Christian Dior Perfumes photoshoot in 2015 with photographer Jean-Baptiste Mondino, as Depp explained in a video interview about the self-portrait.

“I did this at [illustrator] Ralph Steadman’s in his studio around 2021,” Depp explained in the video. “This self-portrait — it was created at a time that was … let’s say a bit dark, a bit confusing. I looked at it and I don’t know why, I thought it needed something else. It needed further … information.”

“When I felt the need to write basically the counting down of the years, essentially I just wrote ‘five’ on there because I was just entering the fifth year of … the madness,” the actor added.

A press release noted that Depp “immersed himself in creating the work as a means of creative healing” in 2021 and returned to the project earlier this year before deciding to share it publicly.

Depp noted in the video that he felt Dior has “stuck to their guns” in working with him in recent years, through a period where he lost multiple film roles and legal battles with his ex-wife Amber Heard. The Pirates of the Caribbean actor began working with Dior in 2015 and signed a new deal with the brand worth more than $20 million back in May.

“It’s not the most comfortable thing doing a self-portrait,” Depp admitted in the video. “Although, in a weird way, almost everything you do is a self-portrait in one way or another.”

Depp detailed his process toward creating the self-portrait in the video, recalling that he “would sit with a mirror and just sketch myself, and I would do that for a while.”

“Different days, different light, different angles,” he added. “I appreciate portraits of people that really are just as lifelike as a photograph. But, unfortunately, we have been living in the times where you may as well just take a photograph, if that’s what you’re looking for. So to be able to drag out whatever the figure that represents to you, that it shouldn’t look, I don’t know, real, in a way. It should be — it should just be some expression.”

As Depp and Castle Fine Art unveiled “Five” to go on sale Thursday, the actor noted he will donate some of the money made from each print to the nonprofit organization Mental Health America. Depp described the organization as “a wonderful facility and it’s an extremely deserving cause” in a video shared by the art retailer.
“They do a lot of great work there, so yeah, $200 from every print will go to them,” he added.
Sales for “Five” begin Thursday at 12 p.m. ET exclusively at Castle Fine Art’s website. The prints themselves, which feature Depp’s handwritten signature, are being sold starting at $1,950.