Depp walks the plank - Herald Sun
By Michael McKenna
11sep03
JOHNNY Depp was, by all appearances and his own admission, born to play a pirate.
A mutineer of Hollywood, Depp plotted a different course to one that could
be expected of a wannabe rocker who first stole attention as a 1980s TV heartthrob.
The perennial pretty boy actor has, instead of magazine cover stardom, a treasure
trove of critical acclaim for edgy performances in fringe movies and a reputation
for sneering at the big studio roles.
Now 40, a family man and permanent resident of France, Depp is equally known for his years of cutting a drunken, drugged-out path through the various ports of call in the celebrity party world.
Hardly the typical leading man of a Disney movie. But Depp was the first choice of blockbuster baron Jerry Bruckheimer to head the cast of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl and revive the swashbuckling adventure.
After decades of expensive failures, which include Disney's own animated wreck, Treasure Planet, last year, Pirates has become one of the biggest box-office hits of the US summer. And much of it has to do with the performance of Depp.
Bruckheimer said it was difficult to convince the studio bosses to risk the $US140 million high-seas romp, based on nothing more than a Disney theme park ride, on the actor.
But Bruckheimer had no doubts Depp would steal the show.
"I felt it needed an actor whose presence would tell you it's not just a movie about a theme-park ride," he said. "Johnny Depp does that. He has such an interesting body of work behind him that you know you're getting something more."
And Depp delivers with a tongue-in-cheek, campy performance that rivals adventure genre roles as significant as Errol Flynn in Captain Blood (1935) and Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).
Depp, in an interview last month to promote the film, admitted that despite his usual suspicion about big-studio movies he knew the role of pirate Captain Jack Sparrow was made for him.
"It's funny. When Lee Marvin was asked how did he prepare for his (Oscar-winning) role in Cat Ballou as the drunken gunfighter, he said, 'I've been preparing for this role for 40 years,' and I kind of feel the same," he said.
The involvement of Shrek writers Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, and the wish to please his two young children, convinced Depp he should "walk the plank" and do a big studio movie.
Depp said his muse for the eccentric pirate was a "cross between (Rolling Stones guitarist) Keith Richards and Pepe Le Peu."
The inventive eccentricity he brought to the role is nothing new to Depp, who has taken the same brush to almost 20 films since finding fame on the 1987 TV series 21 Jump Street.
Near the end of that gig, Depp signed on for cult-flick maestro John Waters' Cry-Baby, a half-serious, half-satirical revival of '50s rock 'n' roll rebel melodramas.
Depp then jumped into a string of films playing idiosyncratic outsiders, including Edward Scissorhands, Benny & Joon, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Ed Wood, Don Juan De Marco and Dead Man.
Donnie Brasco, in 1997, caught Depp a wave of praise that most actors would have tried to parlay into bigger pay cheques in ever-bigger movies. Instead, Depp ploughed on with his resume of weirdos, playing gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; crime solver Ichabod Crane pursuing a headless horseman in Sleepy Hollow; a gypsy guitarist in Chocolat and a '70s cocaine kingpin in Blow.
While he has returned to his usual off-beat roles – playing a corrupt CIA agent in Once Upon a Time in Mexico – Depp says he enjoyed working on a blockbuster for Disney.
"The funniest thing was that my little girl, Lilly-Rose (aged four), was asked by someone at a restaurant what her parents did and she said that her mother was a singer and her father was a pirate."
For that reason, he said, it would be hard to turn down doing a sequel.
Pirates of the Caribbean is open now