When Johnny Depp said he started smoking at age 12, drinking alcohol, and using drugs soon after.

Actor Johnny Depp has always spoken frankly about his struggles with alcohol and drugs. On his 57th birthday, here is Depp talking about his demons.

Johnny Depp turns 57 on Tuesday.

Actor Johnny Depp has had some difficult years, with an ongoing lawsuit against ex-wife Amber Heard, a career that appears to be disintegrating, and public opinion on him is uncertain. But the actor has never shied away from talking about his demons. On her 57th birthday, here is Depp in his most sincere moment, talking about his struggles with alcohol and drugs over the years.

Depp said in an interview, according to People, that he started smoking at age 12 and soon started drinking and using drugs. In 1997, he said to Vanity Fair: "Oh man, yes. Johnny was unhappy then ... It was a pretty dark moment for me. I don't know what was going on. Well, I was poisoning myself beyond what I was Credible. I'd eat that glass, man. There was a lot of liquor. A lot of liquor. I was pretty sick. "

"I never wanted to be the type that people looked at," Depp told The Boston Globe in 2008. "I felt like I could only be myself when I was alone, that I became something of a novelty. The only way he could spend that time was drinking.

"I spent years poisoning myself," he told Rolling Stone in 2005. "I was very, very good at it. But finally I was faced with a critical decision: do I want to remain a dumba ** or do I not want to be a dumba **? It was better to stop. Now I look back and say: ‘Why? Why did I do that? ' "

However, he admitted that he never drank for fun. "I never had that. It was never about recreation. Not always. That was never my motivation, "he said.

In 2004, Depp told Playboy that although he abused alcohol, "I was never a cokehead or anything like that," according to The Chicago Tribune. "I always despised that drug. I thought it was a waste of time, pointless. But he was poisoning me with alcohol and medicating me. I was trying not to feel things, and that's ridiculous. "

In recent years, the actor has been plagued by lawsuits and the repeated underperformance of his films at the box office, leading many to believe that the star, once one of the highest-paid actors in the world, did not it is as popular as before. He admitted to The Hollywood Reporter that he was "overpaid" for Pirates of the Caribbean movies, so he was reported to have earned more than $ 300 million. But the tide will soon turn in his favor, as recent reports suggest the actor might appear in the new movie Pirates, after a period of uncertainty when Disney was trying to distance himself from him.