Despite the bad boy image he used to project during his younger years, Johnny Depp comes off as a soft-spoken, shy artist when it comes to doing interviews. That’s not to say that he’s a bad interview. In fact, I would say that our interviews with Johnny Depp contain some of the most insightful and interesting takes on the art of acting. – Ethan Aames for Cinema Confidential.
Q: The last two movies, Pirates and Charlie, had you playing characters that were way over the top. Do you prefer to play things closer to you or have nothing to do with you?
JOHNNY: Any actor with any semblance of sanity or insanity will tell you that our biggest fear is to go anywhere near where you are. It’s O.K. to use certain truths. It’s a great challenge and I’ve touched on it here and there in more charactery parts, like Libertine coming up. I, more than anything, am more interested in exploring one area and saying that it’s territory covered and seeing what happens next. Where do you go next?
There is that voice of Marlon Brando’s that reverbs to me. One time, he said (Johnny in Marlon Brando voice) How many movies do you do a year? Two or three. And he said, You gotta watch yourself. I said, Why? He says, We only have so many faces in our pocket. You get to a certain point when you play all these different characters that he really is right.
But one of the luxuries of an actor and one of the joys of the gig is you get to observe people. By observing people, you find little interesting traits and say, I’ll have a little bit of that. And you just store it up and save it for later because you never know when you’ll need it.
Q: Going back to Marlon’s comment, you have never returned to a character since 21 Jump Street so what was it about Captain Jack Sparrow that inspired you to do two more Pirates sequels?
JOHNNY: Speaking for myself, what happens to me is that with every character, once you’ve clicked into that character, you really know the guy. You become very close to him and love him. It’s always very difficult at the end, that week to 10 days before wrap, where you can hear that clock ticking. Then you go through this really nasty depression afterwards. There’s an odd separation anxiety because you’ve been this person for a pretty good length of time and then suddenly (whistles), gone.
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