INTERVIEW – She was the flayed pop star of The Idol and the heroine possessed from the Gothic tale Nosferatu. Ambassador Chanel, the young actress multiplies the offbeat roles with a singular intensity.
Lily-Rose Depp is in Los Angeles. The interview will be done by phone. No, she is in Paris. Can we meet her? No, she has just taken off for Berlin. Lily-Rose Depp is as fleeting as morning dew. A mysterious star. She slips into our hands. So we won’t see it. We will only hear his voice, soft, posed, friendly, playful. Listening to it, we guess it adorable and well high. Why is Berlin asking him? Her “partner”, as she calls her (070 Shake, the American rapper and singer of R’n’B), gives a concert there. We will not venture further on this ground, we know that we should not mention our private life. Nor too much question him about his famous parents, Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis, the first, star of Hollywood, the second, singer and actress, French national treasure, including the divine idyll with the favorite actor of Tim Burton made a whole generation bottled for his pop melodies.
The couple, separated in 2012, has remarkably preserved their two children-Lily-Rose and Jack-flashes of photographers and indiscretions. Then Lily-Rose entered the light. It was in March 2015, first public appearance, alongside his mother, one of the most famous ambassadors in Chanel, to a parade of the house art in New York. Lily-Rose was 15 years old. Since then, this lovely teenager with high cheekbones and the mouth hemmed has become one of the faces of the label with two C, especially in many beauty campaigns. As for his dream – to make cinema – he materialized very quickly, talent and lobby helping. After two very noticed films in 2016 – The dancer et Planetarium -, she has never stopped turning again. And proved that she could play everything, sulphurous pop star in the series The Idol (Minister at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival) to the young romantic woman possessed in Gothic Nosferfrom Robert Eggers (released last January), where she caused a sensation. Interview with a child of the century.
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Madame Figaro . – You will celebrate your 26th birthday on May 27. Would you say that it is the most beautiful age in life?
Lily-Rose Depp. – I could not tell you that at the end of my existence, I hope to have great moments to live. But yes, Today I am very happy.
Lily-Rose Depp : Divine Idole
“A girl never forgets her first Oscar ceremony,” did you recently posted on Instagram. This year, you were there for the film Nosfer nominated in four categories …
It was surreal. I grew up watching the Oscars on television every year with my family, my friends, I have always been fascinated by this ceremony. Assist in real life? It was magic. And wear this tailor -made Chanel dress, a dream.
This black floral lace dress required 515 hours of work and more than 190,000 embroidery – glitter, crystals, pearls. How did you choose it?
With my stylist, Spencer Singer, who is also my best friend. We were like children in a fairy tale. This dress inspired by a Haute Couture spring-Summer 1995 archive model was completely custom-made. It is both a mixture of Chanel quintessence and Hollywood style. I wanted a look at the Veronica Lake or the Marilyn Monroe. The dress was also created with the same lace as that which dressed Marilyn in the preview of the film How to Marry a Millionaire. She brought it white, and I in black. Imagine!
Like your mother, are you fascinated by Hollywood’s golden age?
I grew up in Hollywood with a mother who swore by Marilyn Monroe. I love it too. In fact, I am a fan of Marilyn just as I am a fan of my mother, we can say that this iconic figure has created a very strong link between us. But I also have another actress in my pantheon. It’s Catherine Deneuve. Donkey skin has always been my favorite film, I still watch it in a loop. Deneuve embodies my fantasy as a French woman with all the magic and the fantasy that characterizes her. During the preview of Nosferatu, I also wore a Chanel dress that my mother and I had baptized the “moon color.” dress.
Chanel and you, is it a long love story?
She is first linked to my mother’s wardrobe, in which I was going to search as soon as I knew how to crash, I also loved watching her prepare when she had to attend a parade or a Chanel event. And I remember my first meeting with Karl Lagerfeld very well. I was 8 years old, we were in the workshop, I was wearing a kind of yellow and black scarf with justin Bieber, which retrospectively I am not proud. (Laughs.) But he was so warm, charming. I only remember his generosity and extreme kindness.
What was your biggest fashion moment for home?
There have been many, but I believe that scrolling in Chanel bridal (For haute couture spring-summer 2017, editor’s note) The most wonderful moment of my story is the house with the house. I was 17 years old and a crazy stage fright. I had never done modeling, it is not my job, and I was surrounded by girls who measured three meters more than me. (Laughs.) But as soon as I appeared on the podium on the arm of Karl, any anxiety has disappeared. I tell you that from a very young age, I dreamed of being the bride Chanel, a fantasy of a girl who materialized. I am very romantic, it’s my French side, I imagine.
What type of beauty do you embody, do you think?
It’s hard to talk about my head. I can just tell you that it makes me very happy when people tell me that I look like my mother.
You spent your childhood between the United States and France, between Los Angeles and Provence. Do you feel French or American?
The two … As soon as I am in France, I become Parisian, I take over the accent, I talk about Argot with my friends, and as soon as I arrive in California, I turn into real L.A. girl. I am nourished by paradoxes. But I was raised by a very French mother, I feel in me her philosophy of life, her poetry, her love, her freedom.
You are living in Los Angeles today. Is it easier to manage notoriety in this city?
I like Los Angeles, I grew up, it is a city where it is really possible to imagine a universe with oneself, we are less confronted with the outside world. It is easier to create your bubble, because everything is much more deprived by the force of things: you have to take a car to go in most places, you have to make an effort to see others. But beware, I also like to get out of this enclosed space. When I go to Paris or New York, I come across many more people and I feel more in line with the world. You just have to know how to protect yourself. I was a shy child and I remember, a little girl, with certain situations that seemed strange to me, such as seeing cameras robbed on me. But my parents have always tried to offer us, to my brother and I, the most normal childhood possible even if I know that it was not. Children must be preserved from notoriety because they have not chosen it. Today, I practice a job that propels me into the light, but I am an adult, I decide my own choices, it’s up to me to manage … It is complicated in 2025, and much more than at the time of my parents, because social networks give us the impression that the life of public figures belongs to everyone – and that we must know everything about them. Knowing this, it is important to keep a part that is only to yourself and a taste for normality. Me, for example, I love going to the supermarket, having a coffee at the bottom of my house, walking alone …
At 16, you became Ambassador of Maison Chanel, then you branched off a year later to the cinema – Planetarium et The dancer In 2016. Was it your dream of becoming an actress?
I always wanted to do cinema and started early enough, at the age of 14, by turning a scene in a film made by Kevin Smith, the father of one of my best childhood friends, Harley Quinn Smith. Two years later, with Kevin again, Harley and I played the main roles of Yoga Hosersa fairly surreal horrifying comedy. We had to hang on. But it was also a very family shooting, my parents and my brother are in the credits. I loved playing and, frankly, I told myself that I could never do something else of my life. Then I had the opportunity to pass the cast of Planetariumwith Rebecca Zlotowski, and my acting life really started.
Lily-Rose DeppAs soon as I am in France, I become Parisian again
You who did not take theater lessons, how did you learn to play?
I have a coach with whom I started working at the age of 19. Actress, she is a job that is quite instinctive, natural, that is also why it is magic, cinema: we can do a thousand things to learn to play, but in the end, everything comes from the inside. It is an emotional drive. The directors with whom I made my first films also taught me a lot, Rebecca Zlotowski in particular, who has become a great friend, and to whom I owe my career.
In your latest film, Nosferatu, From Robert Eggers, released in January, you explore a very Gothic score. Do you have gray areas?
I am an actress, so necessarily there are lots of things in me, different colors, which allow me to express private, secret feelings, that we do not see every day. It only takes a character to make them arise. But there have also been a lot of preparations and rehearsals to Nosferatu. I worked in particular with a movement coach for all very physical scenes. And then Robert Eggers is a director whose scenarios is so rich and fed on information that we enter another world, a world that reveals the territories that we do not know.
What can you wish for these next years? Do you still have dreams to come up?
I dream of shooting a musical. Child, I was a fan of Guys and Dolls (White doves and villains, a Mankiewicz film, editor’s note), with Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons. I sang for the first time in the series The Idol, And since then I feel more comfortable in this exercise. I do not want to become a singer, I do not think that music is part of my artistic path, but I would like to approach singing again in a role in the cinema. And then I also love to dance …
