Having sailed so long outside the mainstream, Johnny Depp isn’t sure how to navigate superstardom – BY JEFF STRICKLER for the Star Tribune
LOS ANGELES — Sure, he has starred in plenty of movies, but usually as a performer who prides himself on disappearing inside his role. It wasn’t Depp who drew audiences to those films, it was characters such as Edward Scissorhands, Donnie Brasco and George Jung (“Blow”).
The patrons lining up at theaters today will be there to see Depp. The sequel to the 2003 blockbuster — which had $652 million in ticket sales worldwide — is a mega-budget star vehicle built around and totally dependent on Capt. Jack Sparrow, the flamboyant pirate he created. And that blows his mind. “I’ve definitely never been a crowd-pleaser,” he said. “I was very surprised that the first ‘Pirates’ did as well as it did. I still am.”
“If you define my career in terms of box office, I’ve spent 20 years making movies that the studios consider failures,” he said. “To me, they were great successes just because we got them made.”
Depp says he’s “not the leading-man kind of actor — there’s a whole bunch of guys out there, actor types, who do that well.” Instead, he prefers characters “who may seem bizarre.” He points out that while the first “Pirates” movie was being filmed, studio executives went bonkers over reports that he was playing the freewheeling character as a seagoing Keith Richards.
“The executives panicked, and for good reason,” he said. “Fortunately, the viewers came in and saved me.”
Director Gore Verbinski said that the first film’s low profile enabled him to recruit actors from foreign and independent movies — the same background as Depp.
Keira Knightley was nominated for an Oscar earlier this year for “Pride and Prejudice,”but when we hired her, she was just a teenager,” he said. “And as for Orlando [Bloom], the first ‘Lord of the Rings’ movie hadn’t come out. They weren’t famous yet.”
Depp loves playing Capt. Jack Sparrow. To wit, filming of the third movie in the series, scheduled for release next Memorial Day, is half done and will resume as soon as the promotional work for this movie is over.
“That character made a lot of friends out there,” he said. “He’s a really fun character to play. When [filming on] the first movie ended, I was sad to say goodbye to him. There are a lot more things you can do with a character like this. I don’t feel that I’m done with him yet.”
