In 2007, Johnny Depp's now 16-year-old daughter Lily-Rose was hospitalized for kidney failure following an E. Coli infection, and it was a terrible experience that really changed the actor's life and his perspective.
"When my daughter was ill in Great Ormond Street [hospital] it was the darkest period of my life," the 52-year-old "Pirates of the Carribean" actor told Graham Norton, according to Us Weekly. He even donated $2 million to the hospital as a thank you a year after she was treated there.
As someone who visits sick children in hospitals often, these experiences really changed once Depp had to deal with it first-hand.
"I'd always done these visits, but after that experience the visits became more and more important," he continued. "The kids are so courageous, but to be able to bring a smile or a giggle to the parents means everything in the world to me."
When Depp makes these visits, he often goes dressed as his "Pirates of the Caribbean" character Captain Jack Sparrow. In July, he and his co-star Stephen Graham visited Lady Cilento Children's Hospital in Australia to cheer up the children and their families, as HNGN previously reported.
"He was going from room to room seeing all the kids who couldn't get out of bed," one of the patients' moms said about Depp. "We waited out of the front of one of the rooms, and he came up to us and had a really good chat...It was really beautiful. Everyone kept on trying to move him on, but he kept on coming back to be with the kids."
Depp recently opened up about Lily-Rose, who is already a high-fashion model, and how she is growing up faster than he ever could have imagined.
"What's happening to Lily-Rose is something that I didn't expect to happen this early, that's for sure," he told the Daily Mail. "It's such a funny thing when you see your daughter transitioning from your baby, your little girl, to suddenly being a young woman. If you're not really looking for it, you can miss it, and Lily-Rose is on that road already and there's nothing I can do to stop it...When I see her with makeup and all that stuff, it's really disturbing, because she's a very beautiful girl, and it's all happening so fast."
