Johnny Depp's Kids Have Given Him "Clarity"

In the December issue of British GQ, Johnny Depp talks about fatherhood, his past drug use and thinking he was going to die at one point.

Speaking of his children - Lily-Rose, 12, and Jack, 9 - the actor says because of them, his outlook on life is clearer.

It was having children that woke me up. To fall in love, to that degree... to fall in love with... these little angels. Who didn't ask to arrive, but who arrived anyway. That was just huge for me. It was like the uplifting of a veil. There was something that it gave me, for the very first time in my life... Clarity."

Being a loving dad is a far cry from when he was a kid using drugs.

Depp confessed, "When I was a kid, drugs were around. My parents went through a nasty divorce. That was just the direction I went in, for a while. I wouldn't say it was self-medicating. It never had anything to do with fun for me. I don't trust anyone who hasn't been self-destructive in some way. Who hasn't gone through some sort of bout of self-loathing. You've got to bang yourself around a bit to know yourself. We would put things in our bodies that were unfit to put into a f***ing auto-mobile. You know what I mean? You wouldn't put that stuff in a bad car."

He also talked about the time when his private jet lost power over the Pacific Ocean.

He shared, "There was a moment when I thought: Jesus Christ, we've had it. We were on a recce for Rum Diary in Mexico. And the plane just shuts down. Big time. All the lights go out. Then we go into a strange, uncontrolled descent. I looked at Bruce and said: 'Is this it?' And then we both burst out laughing, as we were plunging to what seemed to be our deaths. It felt so f***ing ludicrous it was hysterical. And so we lost it. Laughing our asses off as the plane was going down. .. [and then] everything kicked back in. We made it through."

With famous past girlfriends like Winona Ryder and Kate Moss, Depp reveals he knew when he met Vanessa Paradis that she was the one.

He said, "I knew at that moment that I was done. It was like - OK - it's over [single life]."