Johnny Depp Shares Rare Insight into Raising Kids Lily-Rose and Jack with Ex Vanessa Paradis in France

Johnny Depp is looking back fondly on the time he spent raising his kids in France with ex Vanessa Paradis.

In a new interview with The Sunday Times, the sentimental subject came up as the Pirates of the Caribbean star, 62, revealed that a painting hanging behind himself was a portrait of his daughter, Lily-Rose Depp, whom he and Paradis welcomed together in 1999.

“I never finished it,” Johnny said. “She was 10 then, and 25 now.”

“Years get away from us, don’t they?” the actor continued, lamenting, “I’m of the empty-nest syndrome.”

When asked what he misses most about having his two kids around — he and Vanessa also share son Jack Depp, born in 2002 — Johnny said, “Oh man, my kids growing up in the south of France in their youth?”

Johnny and Paradis, who split in 2012 after 14 years together, chose to raise their children out of the spotlight in an estate near St. Tropez that Johnny bought in 2001. The family later moved to Los Angeles.

“I was Papa. I cannot tell you how much I loved being Papa,” Johnny recalled of that time.

“Then, suddenly, Papa was out the window. I was Dad,” he continued, seemingly a nod to the kids getting older and dropping the endearment. “But Papa was awesome, and I’m getting old enough for Papa to possibly come back. Some motherf—–’s going to have to call me Papa!”

After being asked where “home” is and sharing that he doesn’t spend much time in the U.S. anymore, instead splitting his time between the U.K. and the Bahamas, Johnny once again touched on his fond memories of his time with his kids in France.

“Truly, the first time I felt I had a home was the place in the south of France where Vanessa and I raised the kiddies. That’s the only place that ever felt like home,” he said.

Paradis, 52, previously revealed that she was the one who picked France as the family’s home base.

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“For my children, I secretly choose France. Even though Los Angeles is great too,” she told Belgium’s Weekend Knack magazine in 2007.

“We raise them bilingually anyway, so for them it doesn’t really matter,” she explained. “Only, in the south of France you can live much more anonymously. And that’s a bliss, especially when the children are still young.”