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Knack Focus 9/03

Johnny Depp - "I've always wanted to be a pirate".
Johnny Depp, the champion of independent cinema, makes the box office ring tor the first time with the extravagant pirate movie 'Pirates of the Caribbean'. 'I'm stupid. If I was smart, I would have been rich a long time ago.'

Johnny Depp in a movie based on a theme park ride in Disneyland? Did the idol of the anti-Hollywood cinema of Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow), John Waters (Cry-Baby), Terry Gilliam (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) and Jim Jarmusch (Dead Man) finally surrender for the money of the infantile American movie factory?

The recently turned 40 Depp has been acting non-stop for half his life, but he's been spared of the big box office success, that normally guarantees a long career. He mostly loves to play excentric roles in just as excentric movie, with a high cult level, or in movie that are so dark and strange that they hardly get shown anywhere (like his directing debut The Brave that after a disastrous premiere in 1997 at the Cannes film festival went down without glory). As good as his nose is for independent and pig-headed cinema with sharp edges, that wrong are his choices the few times he appeared in a mainstream movie adventure (The Astronaut's Wife; Nick of Time). "He isn't interested in stardom," says Robert Rodriguez, director of his next movie Once Upon A Time In Mexico. "I don't think he's ever needed it or ever wanted it."

With Pirates of the Caribbean: the Curse of the Black Pearl (this long title covers the whole plot), the newest bloated superproduction of Überproducer Jerry Bruckheimer, he does get what he never wanted. The record takings at the American box office (70 million dollars in 5 days) immediately made it the Number 1 of the summer blockbusters. Hopefully that will get Depp enough money to spoil his French chérie (sweetheart) Vanessa Paradis and his children (Lily-Rose who's 4 and Jack, 1), and go back to work in movies that aren't so aggressive for our eardrums and our common sense (and not to mention our hard trailed love for the expert Hollywood entertainment of the gold old years).

You sure can't blame Depp for not trying hard enough to make his anti-hero a unique creation. His captain Jack Sparrow is a proud rascal, under whose wings the young black smith Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) takes it up against the untasteful pirates, led by the, as usual, hyperacting Geoffrey Rush. Depp plays the notorious but absolutely inadequate pirate, with his half queer ways, including a snooty British accent and more eye shadow than the provincial girls that try to sell phone sex on VTM to those flipping through the channels late at night (VTM is a commercial, Belgian TV-channel).

Depp is the only good reason to buy a ticket for Pirates of the Caribbean, but sadly enough his wayward performance gets lost in an incoherent formula movie, of which the makers cynically make fun of a genre of which they shamelessly exploit the ingredients. The crafty qualities of the old Errol Flynn movies to which is referred, have to make room for an empty special effects show (under the moonlight the undead pirates turn into skeletons, and I can assure you: once you've seen one dueling skeleton, you've seen them all) and a hysterical tornado of bag coordinated action, adventure, horror, humor and romance (the love interest comes in the graceful form of Keira Knightley). The winks are so greasy, that you better get your cholesterol level checked after the movie.

"Does it bother you if I smoke," is the first thing Johnny Depp says when we meet him the night before the release of Pirates of the Caribbean, in the capital of moving images and retreating wrinkles. Depp has banned the cigarette from his life, but in this hotel suite in Century City, Los Angeles, he, for the last time (?), lights one cigarette after another.

How did Jerry Bruckheimer convince you to play this part?
He gave me all his money! Wouldn't that be nice? No, it wasn't that hard to get me on board: I've always wanted to play a pirate. When I was a kid, I was obsessed by it; I would have loved to be a pirate. Luckily that was only a transition faze. When they asked me for Pirates, they didn't have more than a concept, and my reaction was: lets see how it evolves. Who's going to write it? Who's going to direct? As soon as Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, the team that worked on Shrek, had finished the script, I knew how I had to play the pirate. It's also a good thing that it's a movie for adults as well as for children. Two hours of entertainment, that's allowed once in a while.

With the writers of Shrek and director Gore Verbinski of Mousehunt on board, I knew this wasn't going to be yet another summer blockbuster., I felt I could make my own character. I didn't care that this was also a gigantic superproduction. Only when I saw the trailer at the theatre for the first time, I fully realized what a huge production I had gotten myself into. Because during the making of the movie, despite of the large scale scenery, I never had the feeling that this was a gigantic production.

Jerry Bruckheimer exactly chose you because you're not a typical blockbuster star.
When he initially asked me, I was surprised as well. I thought it was very brave to think of me for a Disney-Bruckheimer production. I wasn't the obvious choice. They wanted to attract a family public as much as possible, but for the same price they also get my public: the shaped viewer with bad thoughts that I'm depending on.

Did you get the chance to fill in your character yourself? Were you allowed to rewrite dialogue?
Yes, I was. The writers were very open to everything I could add to the character. The director as well. To great consternation of some of the people at Disney, which I could understand because they wanted to protect their theme park ride. My attitude has always been: when there is a bound between yourself and the character you're playing, you better than anyone understand what drives him, what he says, how he says it, and when he says something. You know him inside out. I have to be able to improvise on the set, otherwise it doesn't work for me.

You play the part of Captain Jack Sparrow, with all his mannerisms; he's even a bit womanish. He's almost a campfigure.
You could call it that. Some people at Disney did indeed think I over doing it a bit: they thought he was a bit too eccentric and they were worried that has was so happy that he was almost gay. I felt like telling them: "Don't you know that all my characters are a bit like that?", but in the end I wisely kept my mouth shut.

The inspiration for the role was a combination of a lot of things, but especially of Keith Richards and a cartoon figure from my childhood. Keith Richards because I see pirates as the rock stars of the 18th century. I'm not imitating Keith, but I just look at his way of going through life, with his big confidence, his wisdom and elegance. And then there was that cartoon figure that I couldn't get enough of when I was a kid: Pepe LePew, a little fellow that lives completely in his own world, not bothered by the reality around him. For example, he always trips over a cat that tries to get away as fast as it can when he's coming. Pepe's reaction to that: "He's obviously playing hard to get."

Has Keith Richards himself reacted?
I haven't told him yet, but he probably already heard about it. I hope - I'm sure of it - that he sees that it's not a caricature but a salute of an admirer.

Aren't you frustrated that you didn't make a career as a musician in stead of as an actor?
No, as for as I'm concerned, everything went the way it was supposed to go. But because I've stayed a musician in my heart - something I was for years with the rock band Kids - I always approach my acting work like a musician approaches a song. For me acting is like a guitar solo, or a jam session with like-minded musicians.

To get into your character, you are wearing heavy make-up; you had your teeth done, with golden caps on your teeth. Is it true that you also had golden caps on your front teeth, but that the bosses at Disney objected to that?
I realized they would go off when they saw what I had done to myself, so I said to the dentist: give me a few extra golden teeth. If they start to wine about it, I can bargain with them: no, my hair stays, and I won't change anything on my beard either; I will keep a few golden teeth, but to please you I'm willing to take the gold of two of my teeth. That's my compromise: I won't go any further because that might damage the integrity of my character. So I took of two golden caps. They still weren't completely happy, but at least they had the feeling that I had compromised a bit as well.

The golden teeth are cosmetic, only meant for the movie, but they are really stuck on my teeth. After the filming, I immediately got on a plane to France to be with my family, but there is was thousands of kilometers away from the only man that could take them off. This press junket in Los Angeles is my first chance to get them removed, but in the mean time I'm still here with my golden smile.

You're traveling between America and the south of France. Does that give you a different perspective on the tense relationship between the US and Europe?
I always try to make a distinction between our government and the country itself, a beautiful country with a lot of beautiful people but also with a reasonable amount of jerks, like it is everywhere in the world. The recent evolution confirms what I've been suspecting for a long time: that the American government likes to play kinder garden teacher. When France wasn't immediately prepared to go to war against Iraq the high placed government officials immediately wanted to change the word French Fries in Freedom Fries and French Toast in Freedom Toast. With that they showed who they really are.

Are you active in the protest movement against the recent course of events?
No, not because I'm afraid to stand up for my own opinion and of being put on a black list - I've been on a black list for a long time already. But I also understand the actors when they say they don't have all the necessary information to add something sensible to the discussion. I don't know all the details either. I don't know what they are hiding from us, there's always a lot that we don't know. Which leads to endless games, and I don't want to be part of those. I'd rather watch everything from a distance. Bush has the job and until the next election there's nothing I can change. He can count his blessing that he does have a job.

Do you believe in God, in destiny?
Yes, I believe in destiny. There has to be a reason for all of this, a driving force, even if we can't fully understand it. That I'm here, that I've been blessed with the work I've done, with the girl I have, the children I have. I don't know if I would call it God. My image of God has evolved, by the way: from the wise old man with a white beard on a fluffy cloud from my childhood years he has changed into a cosmic omnipresence, from the air to the trees, and all possible human and animal creatures. I surely don't go to church. Organized religion doesn't appeal to me. Probably because of my childhood: my uncle was a preacher and he was constantly talking about hell and damnation. Not my scene.

You're only forty, and still you were one of the 'oldies' in the cast of 'Pirates'. A nice feeling?
What do you think! Forty and already the grey eminence! I felt really old! No, I thought it was nice to be surrounded by young, fresh, coming talent.

What good advice did you give Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley and Jack Davenport?
I don't really feel that I'm the right person to give people advice. That's not in my personality. I have know my own failures, conscious or not - although I didn't realize it myself at that moment. So who am I to give the next generation advice? But if Orlando or Keira could benefit from my experience, and prevent that they get crushed by the blockbuster formula too soon, I'm always willing to share my experience with them. But on the other hand, I don't feel as old and wise yet as Vincent Price, with him I made Edward Scissorhands when I was still very young.

How do you manage to not be seduced by the big money?
Pure stupidity, really. To be honest: if I was smart, I could have played a few parts that would have made me very rich.

Which parts?
I'm not going to give examples because that wouldn't be fair on the guy that did get rich by it. But if I was only interested in the paycheck, I now would be the proud owner of a few Picassos, I wouldn't have to work for the rest of my life and I would be able to afford it to sail around on a boat for a year. Now I'm here giving interviews. Not that I'm complaining.

Did having children make you softer?
I wouldn't say softer, but less restless. Before I was always desperately and hastily searching for something else, something better, just something. I wanted to forget and to feel better, which was stupid and a waist of time. Before, I didn't know what it was all about. Everybody was always busy with fame, success, big movies. I knew that wouldn't make me happy, but there were same years didn't I didn't have anything to hold on to and that I was drifting around. Kids bring you back to earth; give your life a direction. And they gave me a strength I didn't have before.

Do they influence your choices as an actor?
Of course, but they already did that before they were born. I remember that I was in a TV series (21 Jump Street) ages ago and that I was totally frustrated: there wasn't anything creative about it, that plastic image that they wanted to give me had nothing to do with me. When I finally got work as a movie actor, I decided to always choose the movies that I felt good about, like Cry-Baby and Edward Scissorhands. I didn't care about how long I would last as an actor, just as long as I could do the things I liked and didn't let myself be led by career planning and box office success. I didn't feel like doing huge movies, but rather do movies that I could be proud of, that my children could be proud of.

Were they happy with your role as a pirate?
And how! My daughter always wanted to come to the set. She went treasure hunting herself. She's four and doesn't yet realize that her father is an actor. One night we were out for dinner and the waitress asked her what her parents did. Mummy is a singer and daddy a pirate, she answered. Which only proves how smart she is: she knows a serious person can't make a living with this.

(Patrick Duynslaegher)