JOHNNY-DEPP.org

NuVein Magazine’s January issue has an extraordinary article about make-up artist Ve Neill called The Many Faces of Fantasy written by Scott Essman. Neill, who specializes in prosthetic makeups and unique character and beauty makeups, has been doing landmark makeup for films such as The Lost Boys, Beetlejuice, Dick Tracy, Ed Wood, Batman Forever, Cobb, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, and Mrs. Doubtfire for over 20 years and has won 3 Academy Awards (Beetlejuice, Ed Wood, & Mrs. Doubtfire).

In a short excerpt from the article, here’s what Ve Neill had so say about working with Johnny on the film Edward Scissorhands…

“I think Johnny Depp really had a great deal to do with bringing that character to life. He really brought some heart and soul to it. It could have been on anybody and somebody else might have done it completely differently, but he was really great in that role. Even though Johnny spoke very little, he could really sell that empathetic character. It was really neat project to work on. Ultimately, Tim Burton designed the character, so Stan Winston and I just brought it to life. Stan had designed the makeup and I remember the first test we did. I think we basically used the forehead piece that was designed and then he had sheets of different types of scars. I just started putting scars into different areas. We just moved scars around and then of course there was the one that went through his lip which I actually put on with scar material,

read full article

In The Libertine Rosamund plays wife and nursemaid to Johnny Depp’s syphilitic Earl of Rochester by Liese Spencer for Scotsman.com.

…Pike went to Oxford to study literature, it wasn’t to get a degree under her belt, she says, but to taste more of that backstage magic. “I knew that they put on loads of plays, and I knew that it would be a great opportunity to go around and do things without anyone seeing, to practise.”

One of the authors she read at Oxford was the Earl of Rochester, an alumnus of her college, Wadham, and the debauched model for Johnny Depp’s character in The Libertine. As his screen wife, Pike only gets one retrospective love scene with him, because he has long become bored with her and moved on to other things. Like the rest of the film, however, it’s quite a raunchy one, with the two of them smartly dressed in a moving carriage, Depp’s hand up her skirt, while she murmurs obscene encouragement. “We all dream about making love with Johnny Depp!” she laughs. “But that scene was funny because the carriage was so bumpy. It was tiny and the director was doing the camerawork in there with us. So his camera was bobbing away… Still, it’s a brilliant example of how things are much sexier if you don’t see them. It’s more sexy than making love in a bed would have been. We don’t even kiss, and it’s so erotic.

read full article

Everyone in Hollywood must face the same devilish question of compromise at some point. Many, in exchange for fame, fortune and a good table at Ashton Kutcher’s restaurant, will happily trade in their artistic aspirations for a big-budget, roman-numeral-bearing remake co-starring Tom Arnold as the zany neighbor next door. Others, meanwhile, cling so tightly to their anti-commercial virtues that they boast about their new John Sayles movie opening soon in one theater as their tears fall into the mac-and-cheese dinner they’ve prepared in their studio apartment. – Larry Carroll

Remarkably, Johnny Depp has successfully straddled this line for more than two decades, earning himself an audience filled with equal numbers of shrieking “Pirates” fanatics and turtleneck-clad film students joyously reciting “Dead Man” dialogue. It seems like part of his master plan, then, that the Kentucky-born actor would spend November simultaneously shooting the world’s most high-profile sequels, debuting a controversial unrated art film and receiving a career tribute at age 42.

“I’d do it over exactly the same way if I had to do it over,” Depp grinned through gold-capped teeth at the recent premiere of his bawdy drama “The Libertine.” “I wouldn’t do anything over.” To Depp, that credo now includes “The Libertine,” a sexy 17th-century biopic that the ratings board attempted to slap with an NC-17.

“I can just say that getting the film made [was tough], but you feel that about every movie you make,” said Depp, who stars as real-life poet John Wilmot.

read full article

In the opening frame of The Libertine, Johnny Depp, all delicious cheekbones and tousled hair as the sexual omnivore the Earl of Rochester, begins by challenging his audience. “You will not like me.” But of course you do. – By Chrissy Illey, Evening Standard

We meet in a sterile hotel room in Beverly Hills. Depp is wearing a scraggy T-shirt and jeans, spiky hair and hornrimmed glasses – but still looks absolutely gorgeous.

“I definitely had a phase in my life when Rochester and I would have spent the night together,” says Depp. “He is a character I know in a lot of ways. “I recognised something that I had gone through. I quit drinking spirits because I wouldn’t stop. I would just keep going until a black screen came down where you can’t see anything any more and you don’t know if you’re around.”

Depp quit drinking, thinking it was “wasting time”, and in the same period he stopped doing drugs. “Trying to numb and medicate myself was never about recreation. It was existing without living …
“I would have made a dangerous mistake of trying to live it. Not necessarily going out and shagging everything that had a pulse, but drinking, and I would never have got through it. Ten years later, I have a solid foundation to stand on.”

Then, of course, there was the raging, destructive, on-off relationship with Kate Moss. He regularly trashed hotel rooms (when he wasn’t strewing them with flowers for Moss) before he left the model to settle down with the French singer Vanessa Paradis,

read full article

Tennyson and Bronte loved his poetry. So why is the Earl of Rochester remembered only as a drunken lech?

Barry Didcock on the slow rehabilitation of a 17th century rake and libertine

HIS lyrics were peppered with obscenities and satirised peers and rivals alike. He scandalised polite society by partying hard with actresses and prostitutes and yet he has won many fans, among them feminist critic Germaine Greer. He was implicated in at least one murder, was an early practitioner of “dogging” and had a number of alter egos, including Dr Bendo. He could regularly be found quaffing claret in city nightspots and among his many affectations was a pet monkey. Predictably, he died young. And now Johnny Depp is going to play him in the movie biopic.

But this is no rapper with an itchy trigger finger, no rock star with a death wish. Instead it’s a description of John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, the most notorious rake and libertine of the 17th century. He was also a poet and playwright but despite being championed by Defoe, Voltaire and Tennyson, his verse had been all but excised from the canon of English literature when Graham Greene picked up the mantle in the early 1930s. Greene wrote a biography called Lord Rochester’s Monkey, but even it was deemed too fruity for his publishers, Heinemann, who feared prosecution under the obscenity laws. Only in 1974 did it finally see the light of day.

read full article

Johnny Depp and the Libertines: The history behind his new role
What was it about the 17th century that made it so mucky? What in heaven’s name gave rise to the Earl of Rochester and his hellish rhymes? And what were the consequences of such unbridled obscenity? As Johnny Depp dons Rochester’s peruke in Hollywood, A C Grayling reveals the world of the original libertines

Published: 06 November 2005

It is quite something to live in an age of riotous immorality, and yet to be accounted the most dissolute individual of the time. That is the achievement of the notorious John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, who lived very fast and died very young in the reign of Charles II. He is the subject of a film to be released shortly, starring Johnny Depp as the handsome, witty, devastatingly charming and unstoppably immoral Earl. But however good the film is, and however many X-ratings it gets, it can never capture all the truth about Rochester, for, surprising as it may seem, we live in a more prudish age than he did, and not all his doings can be reprised on the cinema screen.

Rochester was a poet of great talent, a brave naval officer, a rampantly intemperate bisexual, a harvester of maidenheads, a pimp and bawd for his King, a Hooray Henry repeatedly involved in duels and brawls (at least one of which resulted in the murder of a citizen of London) –

read full article

**Language warning**

Prince of Darkness
Booze, Oscars and tax breaks.. On set as Johnny Depp delivers his most outrageous performance ever in The Libertine
Words Jonathan Crocker additional reporting Martyn Palmer.

“This guy had been kept in the darkness for far too long.” Says Johnny Depp, leaning towards Total Film. We’re in Depp’s trailer on the Isle of Man. It’s cold outside. He’s wearing cuffs frilly enough to shame a poodle and passionatley telling us about John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester. “He’s an incredible character. I’m amazed that, like, Marquis de Sade has got more action, you know? But then I’m also amazed Marlowe hasn’t got as much action as Shakespeare…”

Depp in in his element. “It’s been great. It feels f**king great…” And he deserves to enjoy the moment. Because his journey to playing the titular 17th-century poet hellraiser in The Libertine has been much longer and more involved than simply nipping over the choppy water from his home in France.

It started in 1995. Depp watched John Malcovich playing Rochester in Stephen Jeffreys’ play. He was brilliant, Johnny told him so. Malkovich said he wanted him to star as Rochester on screen…

Depp has signed to headline, bringing freshly found box office clout in addition to his talent, having just starred in Pirates of The Caribbean. He also approves of edgy Accurist and BMW ad helmer Laurence Dunmore,

read full article

And the Gary Cooper Spirit of Montana Award goes to… Johnny Depp!

BOZEMAN, Mont.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Oct. 10, 2005–HatcH Audiovisual Festival is proud to announce the winner of this year’s 2nd Annual Gary Cooper Spirit of Montana Award, actor/ musician Mr. Johnny Depp! The award was presented at the Hatch Awards Red Carpet Ceremony held at the Ellen Theatre October 9th at 8:00pm on the Festival’s Celebrated Gary Cooper Day!

Revered as the highest honor at the festival, this award is about dreams and the people that encourage dreamers. It is presented to the actor or actress that embodies the spirit of Gary Cooper. The first recipient is longtime Montana resident Peter Fonda, who received the honor for his unique and bold contribution to the world of filmmaking and his love of sharing artistic knowledge with students of film and theater throughout the world.

“We are so honored to have a recipient who will be thought of in generations to come, the way Gary Cooper is thought of today”. Scott Billadeau, Executive Board Hatch.

Among a group of high profiled celebrities, an actor/ actress is selected by the Hatch board of directors, for their profound work as an artist and their contribution to film, to receive the award. The artist selected embodies the spirit and legacy that is Gary Cooper.

“Johnny Depp is a perfect choice. He embodies the aura and generosity of Gary Cooper” Actor, Morgan Freeman

Directors, colleagues,

read full article

We asked Knightley why she thought the first movie was such a hugely popular hit. “I have no idea. It’s still a mystery,” she admitted. “What’s amazing is that there’s such a wealth of stories there–you know, the pirating stories–and if you can tap into it and if you can do it well then it’s just that spark of imagination. There’s all those films when you’re a kid that you kind of remember as part of your childhood that you’ve sort of lived through.

On suggesting that the popularity of Johnny Depp’s outlandish performance as Captain Jack Sparrow might have a lot to do with the first film’s success, she agreed, “Oh, absolutely. It wasn’t written like that. The character, as it was written, was completely straight, so that character is entirely his and Gore Verbinski’s. They totally came up with that and none of us knew if it would work when we were doing it, because it was so off-the-wall and so not what was on the page.

It’s daring, and talk about risks, a.) you’re making a pirate movie, that hasn’t worked in God knows how long, b.) you’re making a film based on a Disney theme park ride and c.) you got Johnny Depp going mental over there, and you’re just thinking, ‘How is this going to work?’ I think you’ve got to take the risks. There’s no point playing it safe, because either you’ll get bored or the audiences will get bored.

read full article

Frenzied photographers formed a human wall around Johnny Depp as the actor arrived for a film festival press conference at the Sutton Place Hotel yesterday, bathing him in an eerie glow of flashing lights – by Peter Howell for the Star.com

So intent were they on grabbing his image, as probably the most in-demand celebrity amongst the many currently visiting Toronto, it’s likely none of them stopped to ponder which Johnny Depp they were actually getting.

Would it be the Michael Jackson send-up of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the summer hit that is maintaining its momentum straight into the fall?

Would it be Capt. Jack Sparrow, the Keith Richards caricature Depp played in the summer ’03 smash Pirates of the Caribbean, and whom he is revisiting during the current simultaneous shoots for the Pirates 2 and Pirate 3 sequels?

Would it be his loving imitation of his friend Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, the late gonzo journalist whom he portrayed in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and whom he recently eulogized by sending his ashes flying from a cannon?

Or would Depp be like any of the characters he has played for his director friend Tim Burton, which include the title-role misfits of Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood, the inquiring Constable Ichabod Crane of Sleepy Hollow or the nerdy groom Victor of Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, the stop-motion romance chiller that premiered last night at the Elgin Theatre?

read full article