By Breaking Celebrity News Staff

With verbiage as vivid and deep as the seven seas, A-list pirate Johnny Depp describes the magic moment he met his future partner -- and mother of his two kids -- Vanessa Paradis.

Depp, 48, told the BBC about the instance back in 1998 when he laid his eyes on the beauty at France's Hotel Costes. (He was there filming Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate.)

He said of Paradis: "She was wearing a dress with an exposed back and I saw that back and that neck, and then she turned around and I saw those eyes, and -- boom! -- my life as a single man was done.

"You have this feeling,” he said. “I can’t really explain what it was, but I had it when I met her. I saw her across a room and thought, 'What’s happening to me?'"

He said the two met through a mutual acquaintance, and the rest is history.

Depp -- who dated Winona Ryder, Jennifer Grey and Kate Moss prior to finding his paradise with Paradis -- said the relationship and her clean-living ways finally helped him beat a long-time battle with the bottle, though he slightly indulges every so often to reflect.

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