There’s no denying it: Johnny Depp is a cultural icon. He’s the industry’s highest-paid actor, regularly voted the sexiest bloke alive and a dedicated family man. In an exclusive interview to mark Alice In Wonderland coming to Sky Movies Premiere and his role in crime thriller Public Enemies, Sky Movies Magazine gets into the mind of Hollywood’s most sought-after star…
Dressed in a typically bohemian mix of jeans, denim shirt under suit jacket, camel-coloured beret and black worker boots and fidgeting distractedly with his moustache and goatee, it’s obvious Johnny Depp has begun to merge back into his eccentric alter-ego Jack Sparrow as he sits in front of Sky Movies Magazine at the glittering Renaissance Hotel in Los Angeles.
Having signed on the dotted line for Pirates 4, we spoke to the ever-relaxed 46-year-old about the return of the salty seafarer, his equally quirky role as the Mad Hatter in Alice In Wonderland and his critically acclaimed turn as John Dillinger in Public Enemies.
SKY MOVIES MAGAZINE: What made you take on the role of John Dillinger?
JOHNNY DEPP: I was fascinated with him as a child, oddly. The same kind of fascination I had with Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. There was just some kind of inherent thing that I adored about Dillinger. In the early ’30s, when the banks were the enemy, Dillinger became a kind of folk hero… He was a very charismatic man and he lived the way he wanted to and didn’t compromise… There was a part of Dillinger that had to see what he could get away with.
SMM: Did working on locations where Dillinger had actually been affect your acting in any way?
JD: Oh yeah. It’s everything. The idea that you can be in the exact spot where John Dillinger took his last breath… It hands you your performance… You know how you will react to everything.
SMM: How was working with co-star Marion Cotillard?
JD: Oh, she’s wonderful. She spent so much time with the family of Billie Frechette [her character] and working on her accent. She was just so committed – an amazing actress.
SMM: Have you had a specific agenda in your career so far?
JD: I’ve just been very lucky in the sense that things arrived when they arrived. I didn’t sculpt anything. I’ve been lucky to have had people like Tim Burton supporting me – when the studio didn’t want to hire me for Sleepy Hollow, Tim fought for me.
SMM: How do you choose your parts and what is it like jumping from one big character to another?
JD: It all depends on the material and what is required of the character. It was interesting for me coming out of Public Enemies playing John Dillinger– a real person with an intense kind of gravity to him – to go right to the Hatter [in Burton’s Alice In Wonderland]. It was freeing because this character could essentially be anything. One minute he’s frightened like a child and the next minute he’s filled with rage and speaking in a Scottish accent. For me it was like being put into a rocket and sent into the stratosphere… As an actor, I think you have to be different every time so you’re not bored yourself, you’re not boring the audience and the director’s not ready to give you the hatchet!
SMM: So was that what attracted you to the role of the Mad Hatter in Alice?
JD: I’d just finished reading Alice and Through The looking Glass, and I remember marking all these incredible passages, these little morsels that Lewis Caroll had dropped in there. Riddles like, ‘Why is a raven like a writing desk?’ and ‘I’m investigating things that begin with the letter M!’... I felt like [the Hatter] would represent all the extremes of the human personality. There was some gravity for me to grab onto this guy... almost like a multiple personality disorder.
SMM: Do you have as many mood swings as the Hatter does?
JD: I’m generally pretty calm. I’m much calmer than I was a few years ago! A lot of that is to do with raising a family – you have to have as many answers as you can have for those babies. My kids have calmed me 100 per cent.
SMM: How does your career affect your children?
JD: The one thing I can say is my kids are never bored. I’ve tried out characters on them and they seem to respond very well… They’re the best. My daughter Lily Rose is 10 and when you’re making a movie she goes, ‘Can I see this one?’ because obviously there are some she can’t see until she’s about 60! She and my boy Jack watched Edward Scissorhands and were in tears… I can’t say they could watch anything else. They’d be freaked out… They have great, great imaginations and they’re funny, funny kids. My fear is that they’re probably going to be actors.
SMM: Can you tell us about your next film, The Rum Diary?
JD: The Rum Diary was a dream. It was something that Hunter [S Thompson] and I talked about back in 1997 and the fact that it actually came to life in the way that it did with the perfect writer director Bruce Robinson, and a great cast… Amazing. It was exhausting but a great experience, so I’m happy and proud to have finished it for Hunter.
SMM: And what can we expect from the upcoming Pirates 4?
JD: I signed on without a script… They’ve involved me in the creative process and they’ve been very welcoming in having me give some ideas, which has been nice. It’s all coming together. There are a couple of reasons for me signing on to Pirates again. Selfishly, I truly love playing Captain Jack Sparrow and I think there’s more to explore. The first Pirates was its own thing. Pirates 2 was the glue that got us to 3 and, in my opinion, I think the films are very well done, but I would like to deliver a Pirates that’s not convoluted and that’s funny and entertaining. That’s really my main motivation for doing it.
SMM: Finally, what is it like being Johnny Depp these days?
JD: I’m a pretty basic, pretty simple guy. Mostly everything I’m about is to do with art or creating something. I can’t escape it, you know. But me? Give me a good book, a good bottle of wine and a nice breezy day and I’m happy. We have a great place [in the south of France] and I go there and I don’t do anything. I’ve been there and not left the property for three months at a time – just literally wake up, go out, check the garden, see the vegetables growing. Never any talk of movies or work... We take the kiddies out on walks and picnics. It’s the perfect existence. It really is a beautiful life and that’s another element that’s had a calming influence, just to be able to have that special time with my kids where phones aren’t ringing and people aren’t following you down the street!
Words: Jenny Cooney
This article first appeared in the Sky Movies Magazine, May/June 2010
