Johnny Depp says his lengthy Hollywood career has been a surreal experience, sort of like stepping through the looking glass into Wonderland – which is fitting because he was promoting Alice In Wonderland when he said it.

“The whole ride – my whole ride and experience on the ride – since day one has been pretty surreal in this business,” Depp, told reporters, according to People magazine.

Depp plays the Mad Hatter in Alice, his seventh collaboration with director Tim Burton, who has reimagined the story with Alice as a teen returning to Wonderland.

“It defies logic, why I’m still here,” said Depp, whose first film role was in A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984. “I’m still completely shocked that I still get jobs and still am around. But I guess more than anything it has been a kind of Wonderland. I’ve been very lucky.”

“I had no idea where anything was going, but you can’t,” he continued. “It’s almost impossible to predict anything like that. I had no idea. I had hoped … I felt like after I’d done Cry-Baby with John Waters and Edward Scissorhands with Tim that they were going to cut me off right then.”

“I felt at that point that I was on solid ground and I knew where I was going – or where I wanted to go – and I was sure that they would nix me out of the gate. But I’m luckily still here.”

And, People reports, out of all the characters Depp has played, Scissorhands is the one his children Lily-Rose, 10, and Jack, 7, like best.

“It’s Edward Scissorhands. That’s by far my kids’ favourite,” he said. “And it’s funny because they’ve seen it but they have a difficult time watching it because it’s their dad and they make that connection. They just connect with the character and also they see their dad feeling that isolation, feeling that loneliness. He’s a tragic character and so I think it’s hard for them. They bawl when they see that movie.”

(Photo by PR Photos)

Story provided by the Dish Information Corporation