Title: Leading Man Johnny Depp
Author: Kris Grant
Publication: Inland Empire
Issue: January 2012
Don’t bother telling Johnny Depp that he was named the most popular actor of 2011 by the Harris Interactive Poll (beating out Denzel Washington and John Wayne). And its better left unsaid that he was the highest paid actor for 2010 with an income of $75 million, and, publease don’t make Johnny squirm by reminding him that he was twice named the Sexiest Actor Alive (2003 and 2009) by People magazine. He’s just not into the accolades; Johnny Depp is more interested in going deep, looking for the next role to play…characters with intensity, idiosyncrasies and often a bit of a dark side. He sheepishly confessed to CNN’s Larry King that before his billion-dollar blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) and its three sequels that he had been known in the confines of Hollywood as “box office poison.” “Yeah, I built a career on 20 years of failures” he proclaimed. That may be overstating things a bit, Johnny. True, Depp has gravitated to roles of off kilter, quirky characters. But while not all his films may have been commercial successes, most were critically acclaimed and firmly established Depp as an artist who cares passionately about his craft, his relationships and his causes.
A high school dropout, Depp came to Los Angeles as a guitarist with a garage band that opened for other bands, for little or no money. “We were all so broke,” he says. He survived by selling ballpoint pens over the phone. “I guess you could say it was my first acting job,” Depp quips. Shortly thereafter, he met actor Nicolas Cage, who paved the way to a part in Nightmare on Elm Street. A minor role in Oliver Stone’s Platoon followed, and then four seasons of the TV crime drama “21 Jump Street” which, for better or worse, established the young actor as a teen idol. “It was so hard because it wasn’t who I was,” says Depp, who eventually broke the shackles of his contract.
The title role in the romantic fantasy Edward Scissorhands (1990), the first of several collaborations with director Tim Burton and later Burton’s romantic partner, actress Helena Bonham Carter, was Depp’s breakthrough success. Under Burton’s direction, Depp played the lead in Ed Wood (1994) as the alcoholic cross-dressing, notoriously awful B-movie film director, and in Sleepy Hallow (1995), he portrayed Ichabod Crane, sent to investigate three decapitations by the legendary Headless Horseman.
Other Burton-Depp films have included Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), with Depp playing eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka; Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), which marked his debut as a singer and for which he received a second Oscar Best Actor nomination; and Alice in Wonderland (2010).
“With Tim, its home,” Depp said during an appearance at the Actor’s Studio. “I trust him, and trust is the most important thing there is.”
Burton and Depp had often talked about old horror movies “and to have Johnny play something like a monster is, in a way, fantastic” said Burton of Depp’s role as the demon barber.
While on the Sweeney Todd set, Depp proposed the idea of a vampire movie. “It was before the Twilight movies came out and I suggested “Dark Shadows,” a soap opera that aired from 1967 through 1971 in the late afternoon. “I had watched it as a kid religiously,” Depp says. “I remembered sprinting home from school. I didn’t want to miss a minute of it.”
As it turned out, Burton also watched the show as a kid growing up In Burbank, and he jumped on the project. Production is now complete, with the film scheduled for release in May. Depp plays Barnabas Collins, an 18th century gentleman who was transformed against his wall into a vampire and buried in a tomb for two centuries. In the year 1972, his tomb is dug up by construction workers and Barnabas begins “life” anew.
In the role of the vampire, Depp sports a pale white complexion, a favored look in many of his roles. But Depp’s range of make-up and costumes defies description as he moves from character to character. For the pirate movies, he had two of his teeth capped in gold. As Sweeney Todd, his long black mane was highlighted with a Cruella de Vil-esque white streak. As the Mad Hatter, he sported wild orange hair and orange eyebrows and digitally enlarged crystalline green eyes- “In my mind, he [The Hatter] is mad,” says Depp. I’ve read stuff about real hatter’s. When they were making the hats, the glue that they used had very high mercury content. It would stain their hands and they would go sideways, they would go goofy from the mercury, go nuts. It did happen to people; they went mad as a hatter. The hatter’s entire body was affected by the mercury, so much that his clothes, his skin color, his eyes, everything reflected the emotion.”
Bonham Carter played opposite Depp in Alice in Wonderland as the Red Queen and in Sweeney Todd as Mrs. Lovett, who served up the murderous barber’s victims in her meat pies. She credits Depp with the choices he’s made in his career. “He’s never done anything according to a patent or formula or any eye for creating a career or any reliance on his looks.
“I think in a funny way we’re a bit similar in that we don’t have much respect for what we look like and we both like to camouflage ourselves and getting away from ourselves. I know we are both allergic to watching ourselves.”
Along the way there was the opportunity to work with the greats, including Marlon Brando in Don Juan Demarco, Al Pacino in Donnie Brasco, Vincent Price in Scissorhands, Martin Landau in Ed Wood. Depp regards Brando as the greatest actor of all time. “He revolutionized acting. He was the pioneer.”
Of course, the biggest commercial successes of Johnny Depp’s career are his four Pirates of the Caribbean flicks. When the Disney Company tapped Depp to bring Captain Jack Sparrow to life on the big screen, they got more than they bargained for.
Depp later told a bemused David Letterman that nervous studio executives just couldn’t understand his portrayal. “It started with frantic phone calls,” Depp related. “And basically what it got down to was, ‘What is he doing? We can’t understand a word he is saying. Is he drunk? Are you drunk? Is he gay? And then, of course, are you gay?”
Depp goes deep into researching his roles. An avid history buff, Depp began researching pirates of the 1800s and discovered that they had many attributes similar to today’s rock stars; roguish behavior, swagger, and bravado. And so he based Jack Sparrow on rock legend Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. Flattered, Richards appeared as Captain Jack’s father in two sequels. It was the unique qualities that Depp instilled into the character, Letterman pointed out, that made the role fascinating. It also led to his first of three Academy Award nominations for Best Actor; he also picked up Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards as Best Actor for the role.
Disney soon forgave Depp forgave supposedly leading the production I down the plank, especially in light of making more than $1 billion on the first of the Pirate movies; the four films have since brought in more than $3 billion.
Depp and his better half, French actress, singer and model Vanessa Paradis, whom he met on the set of the Roman Polanski film The Ninth Gate, lead a consciously “outside Hollywood5*life. The couple and their children, Lily-Rose, 12, and John Christopher “Jack” Depp III, 10, split their time between homes in Los Angeles and the village of Plan-de-la-Tour, France. There’s also an island in the Bahamas that Depp was able to purchase with his Pirates’ bounty.
Depp is happy to have raked in the big bucks with the pirates’ franchise. “It’s for my kids really” he says, adding that he once worked with a guy who told him that money doesn’t change anybody; money reveals them.
“It’s the same with success * says Depp. ”I”ve been revealed; I haven’t changed.”
Currently, Depp is starring in The Rum Diary (2011) a loose interpretation of gonzo-journalist Hunter Thompson’s time working in San Juan, Puerto Rico for an English language newspaper
It was Depp’s second tango with a Thompson book; the first, Fear and Loathing in Lax Vegas- (2008 was based on Thompsons first-person reportage. The story, which The New York Times heralded as “by far the best book vet written on the decade of dope,” first ran as a two-part series in Rolling Stone magazine and Thompson then expanded it into a book, Thompson, like many writers, actors and directors with whom Depp works, became a close personal friend. While living with Thompson for a spell, Depp himself found the dusty Rum Diary manuscript while rummaging through old papers in Thompsons basement.
Thompson was excited at the prospects for the manuscript. “‘Colonel,—he always called me Colonel—’we must produce this” Depp says. “So that was the plan.”
Years later, in 2005, Thompson, 67, suffering from painful and chronic medical conditions, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Colorado. Depp financed his funeral, telling the Associated Press, “All I’m doing is trying to make sure his last wish comes true. I just want to send my pal out the way he wants to go out” That send-off included shooting Thompson’s ashes out of a cannon fired from a 153-foot tower of the author’s own design—a double-thumbed fist clutching a peyote button, with fireworks launched along with the ashes.
Depp’s social causes have included his successful campaign to “West Memphis Three,” three men who were convicted as teenagers in 1994 for the 1993 killing of three eight-year-old Arkansas boys during a time of national fervor over supposed Satanic cult worship. Depp campaigned for their release, appealing on a CBS “48 Hours Mystery” segment titled “A Cry for Innocence”
“I’m here because I firmly, truly, 1,000 percent believe that Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley are totally innocent,” Depp told Erin Moriarty, the shows correspondent. “Every single piece of evidence points to their innocence, not to their guilt” Depp asserted, explaining that he immediately related to Damien Echols, sentenced to death, who as a teenager dressed in “Goth” style.
“He comes from a small town in Arkansas, I come from a relatively small town in Kentucky” Depp said. “I can remember being looked upon as a freak or different because I didn’t dress like everyone else, so I can empathize with being judged for how you look as opposed to who you are. You want to do all you can, you know, to help light the wrongs, and the clock is ticking,’” he continued. “My biggest fear—it’s almost unutterable—is that justice is not served, not only for the three innocent men in prison, but also for those three little innocent boys.
“The most courageous action that the state could now take is to admit they made mistakes and then correct these errors.”
“A Cry for Innocence” aired July 24, 2010. After new forensic evidence was examined, prosecutors and defense attorneys reached an agreement under a legal maneuver called Alford pleas that allowed them to declare their innocence, while acknowledging the district attorney had enough evidence to prosecute them. The West Memphis Three were released from prison in August 2011.
Now Depp, who has some Cherokee blood in his maternal lineage, is in the planning stages of two very different projects. He plans to portray Tonto in a Lone Ranger film, yet to be named. “There is a good, funny script and there’s a boatload of humor,” Depp says, noting that he thought Tonto’s character had been shortchanged in the TV series. Deep’s treatment would portray Tonto as crazy-like-a-fox. Filming is set to begin in January.
And then there’s Dr. Seuss—in real life Theodor Geisel, who resided for much of his life on a hilltop estate in La Jolla, California. Depp is negotiating with Audrey Geisel on the rights to film her late husband’s story and the characters he brought to life.
And so it goes…a vampire, Tonto and Dr. Seuss are all swirling around in the mind of Johnny Depp, who confesses that he does have a tendency to probably work too much.
“I need to have my brain occupied all the time”.
