This article is courtesy of the Wall Street Journal Weekend Edition, whose publicist allowed me to add it to the site. Credit goes to them, and the full article can also be found here
How Johnny Depp keeps defying expectations
August 5, 2006; Page P4
More than 11 years ago, in one of my first columns for this paper, I said of Johnny Depp that “he has just what it takes to revive that dodo bird of the American cinema, the swashbuckler.” How could I have foreseen, way back then, his performance in “Pirates of the Caribbean”? Well, I couldn’t, and didn’t. The subject was a seriously underrated comedy called “Don Juan DeMarco,” in which he plays, with a droll Castilian accent, a delusional New Yorker who claims to be the world’s greatest lover. I came across this piece of pseudo-prescience in the course of thinking about Mr. Depp’s hugely popular portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow, and his new real-life role as king of the Hollywood hill.
What his sudden ascension means for the studios is clear — a mad competition for his services, now that the second installment of “Pirates” is a staggering success, and the third one is already in the can. What it means for movie lovers, especially those who care about actors and acting, is equally clear. Stardom isn’t always synonymous with interesting acting — Robert Redford and Keanu Reeves come to mind. Yet every Depp performance holds out the promise of surprise, and he delivers on the promise more often than not.
Everyone who has seen “Pirates” can readily recall Jack Sparrow’s quirks — the slyness, the blitheness, the woozy feyness that slides in and out of genial gayness. Even those who haven’t seen the film seem to be aware that the model for this unlikely hero was Keith Richards, although an earlier stage in the character’s evolution may well have been that aforementioned Don Juan, who wore eyeliner and, in a fantasy sequence, sported a mask and bandana as a typhoon survivor washed up on the island of Eros. Moviegoers who don’t usually register the specifics of performance love to talk about his work in “Pirates,” but it’s hardly the first time Mr. Depp has inspired such discussion. He has a star presence and a star’s set of skills — in “Don Juan DeMarco” he managed to dominate most of his scenes with Marlon Brando — but without the burden of a star persona. Like the younger Dustin Hoffman, he declines to confine himself to roles that conform to his public’s expectations.
To the contrary, he seems to have chosen most of his films for the sake of the work, rather than for how they might affect his career. (He has done more than 30 features so far, including such small-scale favorites as “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” and “Benny & Joon.”) In a medium that rewards coarse performances, he approaches most of his characters with the restraint of an English screen veteran. In an era when so many performers are stuck in the tar pits of greed and neurotic indecision, it was nice to hear a recent piece on National Public Radio in which Disney’s studio chairman, Dick Cook, recalled Mr. Depp’s disarming eagerness to be in a pirate movie — to his agent’s consternation, the actor committed to the general idea before anyone had written a treatment, let alone a script, then insisted that he would play the rogue.
He had already played a roguish river rat — with something resembling an Irish accent — in “Chocolat” (another role that may have served as a finger exercise for Jack Sparrow). But such is his protean physical presence — seductively rather than aggressively handsome — that he has also been able to play memorable innocents. As the hero of “Edward Scissorhands,” a variation on the theme of Frankenstein’s monster, he is punked-out, purple-lipped, sweetly zonked and the quintessential adolescent outsider. As the dreadful, delusional film director in “Ed Wood,” he makes a strange kind of innocence strangely attractive. Ed looks sleekly girlish in a white angora sweater, blond wig, lipstick and earrings. “I even paratrooped in brassiere and panties,” he tells a schlock producer, by way of explaining his penchant for cross-dressing.
Both of those films were directed by Tim Burton, which makes it all the more puzzling, and intriguing, that Mr. Depp seemed uncharacteristically ill at ease as Willy Wonka in Mr. Burton’s lavishly stylized “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” It’s as if he’d felt a heavy burden of debt to a children’s classic. And knew that what he was playing — the epicene affect, the prissily piping voice, the creepy resemblance to Michael Jackson — didn’t add up to a lot of fun. But Willy was an exception that proves a general rule. Watching Johnny Depp is almost always enjoyable. Now that he’s in the singular position of doing anything he chooses, it will be fascinating to see what he does next.
Write to Joe Morgenstern at joe.morgenstern@wsj.com
