Jan
24
2008
Title: Johnny Sings
Author: Gavin Edwards
Publication: Rolling Stone
Issue: January 24, 2008
Attend the tale of Johnny Depp: still Hollywood’s most perverse superstar, he has followed up the family-friendly Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy with Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a buckets-of-blood saga of cannibalism that is also -gulp!- a musical. That’s right, Depp sings for the first time ever onscreen, and critics are warbling his praises for tackling the notoriously difficult score from theater legend Stephen Sondheim. This gripping adaptation of the 1979 Broadway hit is the sixth movie Depp has done with director Tim Burton, for whom he’s played misfits from Edward Scissorhands to Ed Wood. But a full-out musical is a first for both of them. And the pain-wracked intensity Depp brings to this London barber obsessed with revenge is sparking Oscar talk.
Today Depp meets me in a suite at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood. His jeans are ripped, and his black shirt is open at the neck to reveal a gonzo necklace, a tribute to his late friend, Hunter S. Thompson. Depp looks around the tastefully appointed room. “They’ve really done this place up,” he says. “I lived in the Chateau for a while, years ago, and it was dingy but great. It was like they bought the couches from the Ramada Inn that was closed down by the Health Department in 1970.” Depp has come a long way from his childhood in Kentucky,
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