Return to Interview page

Time Out 4/97

Cover: The Dark Genius of Johnny Depp
A Brando for the '90s

Table of Contents
Features
Cover story Johnny Depp
He's best known for playing oddball outsiders like Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood. But in Mike Newell's mob caper 'Donnie Brasco,' Johnny Depp comes of age and cuts the cute in his first big mainstream picture. Tom Charity meets him.

A Matter of Life & Depp
In Mike Newell's 'Donnie Brasco,' Johnny Depp comes of age as the FBI agent who spent six years undercover with the Mafia. Depp got to spend time with the real-life Donnie, act alongside Al Pacino and, for once, cut the cute from his screen image.

The first time I meet Donnie Brasco, he's gracious, deliberate, and sixtysomething. Minutes later, when we meet a second time, he's charming, careful, and just 33 years old. Not bad for a man who no longer exists.
The first Donnie Brasco is about 5'10," 180 lbs. He wears a cap, brown shades, a pinkie ring and a moustache which peels to the left a little as the interview progresses. He's retired, but not relaxed. His flecked, double-breasted jacket isn't on speaking terms with either the shirt of trousers, but then this Donnie Brasco isn't about to grace any magazine covers in the near future - and, it's hard to say, but the clothes, like the 'tache, may give off the wrong scent. After all, the first Donnie Brasco carries a $500,000 price on his head.
Donnie mark II commands a salary in the region of $4 million a picture. Shorter, lighter, and infinitely more laid-back, he sports a brown leather jacket over a pink T-shirt, tan chinos, and hefty black boots. The T-shirt is torn and the boots…from the mud on them, you'd think they'd spent the night ploughing, but in one of Paris' better hotels, this seems unlikely. He's clean-shaven and still boyish, the hair trim, brown eyes attentive despite the baggage in their wake. He wears a silver chain around his neck, and on the end of the chain, a ring pull. In 1995, Empire magazine voted this man the sexiest movie star of all time. As if Johnny Depp didn't already have enough to live down to.
Ex-FBI agent Joe Pistone doesn't remember how he came up with the alias which was to make his name - he thinks he may have heard it in a movie. As Donnie Brasco, jewel thief and burglar, Pistone worked his way into the Mafia, eventually amassing enough evidence to put more than a hundred Mobsters in jail. The operation was supposed to last six months; instead it went on for six years, from 1975 to 1981 - by far the biggest undercover op the Bureau had ever mounted. It was such a novelty, they had to make up the guidelines as they went along. It was okay to receive swag, to participate in planning burglaries and hijacks, even to pull jobs if it came right down to it, but Pistone/Brasco had to keep his hands clean at the same time, to account for every dollar and retain his credibility as a witness. Inevitably, the situation required a certain amount of 'tap dancing.' If the wiseguys didn't think he was serious, forget about it, he'd never get connected. Six years is a long time in deep cover. Agent Pistone is married with three daughters. He saw them grow up three or four evenings a month. On the street the rest of the time, he was on his own with the Mob. "This lifestyle…it's all Hollywood, phony," he writes in his book, Donnie Brasco. But all the guys around you have Caddies and pinkie rings and broads and cash, and it's easy to forget that you're not one of them. If you don't have a strong personality and ego, a sense of pride in yourself, you're going to be consumed by the role…fall in love with the role…become the role."
Pistone knew what he was getting into - his father owned bars, and had been friendly with some of the 'soldiers.' But "he always gave me a good kick in the ass if I did anything wrong." Pistone kept Brasco close to his chest. Joe doesn't smoke, drink or do drugs, and so Donnie didn't either. He typecast himself, in effect. "I never changed my personality," he tells me. "You should always maintain your own, because if you try to be somebody that you're not, that's when you come into conflicts. When you're immersed that deep and for so long, you're always Donnie Brasco, because you can't go back and forth, you'd get crazy. When you get alone, you can't become somebody else. But sometimes, if you like listen back to the tapes, you think God, is that me?"
'Cry Baby,' 'Edward Scissorhands,' 'Ed Wood,' 'Don Juan DeMarco': Johnny Depp's previous screen incarnations don't exactly scream 'FBI Guy.' He's sweet, soft, sensitive, very beautiful. Keanu is macho in comparison. If you had to pick one word, it might be…innocent. Last time he played an undercover agent, in the TV series '21 Jump Street, it made him a star - but then he was infiltrating high school, and his fans were teenage girls. A pin-up without a cause, Depp could have - should have - been the next Emilio Estevez or Lou Diamond Phillips. In stead, he's routinely described as the most gifted actor of his generation, and has become the most credible role model for all the young Dorffs.
"If you'd been casting this part 25 years ago, all the promising young actors were Italian; now they're all northern European," observes Mike Newell, director of 'Donnie Brasco,' the movie. "At least Johnny can pass for Italian. But, yes, we were concerned when we looked at his work, at Edward Scissorhands, Gilbert Grape, this and that. The producer and I constantly propped one another up with, 'Remember the hotel room at the Mark - he did wreck that hotel room!'
"You meet Johnny and he's highly intelligent, immensely charming, but his origins are poor white from Kentucky and then the wrong side of the tracks in Miami. When you get that, there will be a great deal of tension bubbling under the surface, even if it only erupts in wrecking a hotel room once every decade. That was the theory." He saw it held good when they staged Depp's very first scene: he had to go in and rough up the owner of a strip joint. "It came so easily to him - I mean, he certainly wasn't shy of it, and he did it with a great deal of conviction."
The youngest of four (two by a previous marriage), Johnny Depp grew up poor and unhappy about it. He talks about carving his initials in his arm with penknife at the age of 12, and that desire to make a mark, to carve out his own identity - and for it to hurt - might help explain his subsequent career. "When I was a little kid I used to cut myself," he says. "Yeah, it was probably some early form of tattoos for me. But I can't say that it was ceremonial or ritualistic so much as it was anger and unhappiness, a form of self-loathing." It's impossible not to think of Scissorhands here, his face stained with scars like the tracks of his tears - or that single tattooed teardrop Cry-Baby wears. "I was a weird kid," he deadpans. Taking off his jacket, Depp reveals a tattoo on each bicep: 'Betty Sue' in a heart, and an Indian chief. (Betty Sue, his mother, is half Cherokee.) Of the famous 'Winona Forever,' there is no longer any sign. His parents divorced when he was 15, and within a year Johnny had dropped out of high school with his garage band, The Kids. "I felt that there wasn't anybody who wanted to teach, like I was just a piece on an assembly line: you require a certain amount of this per day. Bing! You got it. On to the next. You require a certain amount of this. Boum! On to the next. I think I've been looking for a teacher ever since," he says, a tentative rationale for the long line of mentors in his life (directors John Waters, Tim Burton, Emir Kusturica, and Jim Jarmusch; actors like Brando, Martin Landau and now, in 'Donnie Brasco,' Al Pacino.) "More than looking for a father figure, because I have a good father, I've been looking for a teacher. These guys have all been great teachers for me. I think of myself as a student, and I probably will be as long as I live."
He claims never to have cultivated any image, but Depp has strenuously cultivated his own potential; credibility may be more than just a by-product. It was at his suggestion that Brando was approached for 'Don Juan DeMarco.' As his friend John Waters puts it: "Johnny's an auteur-hag." We can know a man from the company he keeps, and Depp's pals are more intriguing than most: the Red Hot Chili Peppers, with whom he jams at his club, the Viper Room; Shane MacGowan; the late River Phoenix…and the girlfriends, Sherilyn Fenn, Winona Ryder, Kate Moss…Such extracurricular activities supply a counterweight to the on-screen image; they're the ballast, the balls. Remember the hotel room at the Mark!
Yet the performances need no apology. After spoofing his own teen rebel image in 'Cry-Baby,' Depp landed the breakthrough role in 'Edward Scissorhands,' a part for which Tom Cruise had been considered. He already had the confidence to strip down his dialogue to the essentials, and patterned the role on Tim Burton and Charlie Chaplin, whose films he studied throughout the shoot. It's an indelible performance, not least for its restraint. The costume makes such a strong statement, many actors would have tried to play up to it, but Depp is near blank. He pours all the emotion through the eyes. "Scissorhands, there was a real purity about him that I enjoyed very much," he notes. "He's not human, he's not a machine, he's something else. He was without that responsibility that is placed on young men to be a man, to be violent, or whatever. There was no pressure at all, it was just, simply, a beating heart."
He could almost be describing his own whimsical career strategy. He's resisted the pressures to 'act like a man,' 'to be violent,' to grow up in a commercial sense. He turned down "Dracula," "Robin Hood," "Speed," and "Legends of the Fall." "I don't want to do something that has been designed to be a blockbuster," he says. "If they make money, great, but it's never the reason to do a film. I never want to be on a McDonald's cup, you know." Like Chaplin and Buster Keaton (an inspiration for 'Benny and Joon' and "Dead Man'), Depp affects a childlike innocence that is both comic and melancholy; he is the outsider surrounded. "He sort of relates to freaks because he's treated as one," Tim Burton has remarked. "He has this kind of naïve quality which as you get older gets tested and has holes picked into it…You don't want to shield yourself from society and the rest of the world completely, but at the same time you'd like to maintain a certain openness and feeling that you had earlier in your life."
"We were like kids on the beach," recalls 'Don Juan DeMarco' co-star Geraldine Pailhas. "Johnny gives a lot, and he knows how to listen. I really had his eyes, you know. Very pure, very special."
"Johnny is, in part, a great impersonator," Mike Newell says. "When he met Joe Pistone, I could see him latch on to certain characteristics within seconds. Joe is a man whose exterior is stony - he's very calm, very collected - and you could mistake it for gentleness, but it isn't. He is a hard man, not a gentle soul, with these dead, stone, impenetrable eyes. I would not want to get beaten up by Joe, truly. Johnny took a great deal from Joe."
"I'm not one of those actors who has to be called by his character name, but sometimes it is hard to shake the role at the end of the day or even the end of the film," Depp comments. "Jarmusch came to visit me while I was doing Ed Wood, and we went out to dinner. He said to me, 'Listen, Johnny, you've got to stop this smile - I'm sitting here and I'm talking to Ed Wood and it's really uncomfortable for me, and I'm a little worried about you. Your mouth might get stuck like that, in this hideous grimace.'"
Smiling - with markedly less ivory than Wood - he flips a cigarette, taps it, fires it. "Before meeting Joe I was concerned that we wouldn't like one another. I thought FBI guy: authority: machine: John Wayne. I thought we would hate each other. I mean, I'm not the most patriotic guy in the world…But when we spent time together, I found him to be incredibly warm, sensitive, caring - which is at odds with this machine who could go undercover and do what he did. I spent tons of time with him, and studied him. Joe is a guy who grew up in a modest home, with very good, strong parents. As a teenager he could have gone either way, into the Mob or the other way. He's a pretty extreme personality. Very complex. He has the ability to focus himself, and he just puts these blinders on: when he sets his sights on something, he does it. He's one of those guys that as a kid, you think a real man should be."
Is this, then, a coming of age for Johnny Depp? The role which will 'make his bones,' in Mob-speak? It's his most mature character to date, in his biggest mainstream project - a film that must stand comparison with the definitive Mafia movies, 'The Godfather,' and, especially, 'GoodFellas' (the project was initially put on hold when Scorsese's film came out in 1990). Depp's co-stars are Pacino, Michael Madsen, James Russo…he's playing with the big boys now.
The film is good - very good. While the environment feels familiar, Newell brings a class-consciousness to it that fits - the Mob is nothing if not hierarchical. Unlike Coppola's crew, these guys are right at the foot of the ladder - and like as not they'll stay there. It's a surprisingly low-key picture, with a moving, scrupulously controlled turn from Pacino as Lefty, the hood who takes Donnie under his wing. The fine script by Paul Attanasio ('Quiz Show,' TV's 'Homicide') hangs on this relationship, and the sense of betrayal that overtakes it.
"I don't like the word 'betrayal,'" grouses Pistone. "You're a member of law enforcement, that's the reason you're there, to gather evidence to put someone in jail. If I was one of them, and became an informant, then that would be betrayal, but the law is black-and-white." In his book, he draws a clear distinction between the bad guys he put away and the citizens - the wives and family - who were innocent dupes in his work.
Depp backs him up. "It's not betrayal, it's a man doing a job, putting food on the table for his wife and his children. He's given a job, he has to do it, that's all." Still, he can't help adding, "If I were in that situation, I think probably I would have been killed, because of a sense of loyalty."
In a way, the performance subverts the book, because the pull is evident. He's on the verge of letting Lefty escape. Whereas Pistone insists it was worth it - he'd do it again - the movie is steeped in regret. It's clear Depp felt an enormous responsibility to Joe, yet ironically, by lending the character his natural innocence and empathy, he only unearths more guilt. One can well believe it when Pistone says how moved he was, seeing the movie for the first time, sitting beside the actor. In many ways Newell's Mafia is a more attractive family than the Feds. "I spent 27 years in the FBI, and 22 of them were undercover," Pistone insists. "I like the thrill of living on the edge, the adrenaline, but to me, I can honestly say that the Mafia is not a very enticive [sic] job, it's all about deceit and distrust. Every day is the same: lying, cheating, stealing - it's not a great existence."
But no one lied better than Donnie Brasco. There's an irresistible parallel between what an undercover agent does and acting, though you could press it too far. When Pistone/Brasco lands a punch, it hurts. His actions have consequence. "You only get one take," the agent points out. "If you screw up, it's fatal. And you don't have a script. It's all improvisation." The agent generously suggests that Depp could survive undercover ("He's got a lot of street smarts, which is what it takes, a lot of cojones [he pronounces it 'kaiyyonies'], Johnny Depp has a lot of kaiyyonies, believe me, and he's a great actor, so I think he could do it.') but the actor knows better: "No, I have serious survival instincts, but I don't know if I could handle it psychologically." That he went from 'Donnie Brasco' to write and direct 'The Brave,' a drama about a reservation Indian weighting an offer to act in a snuff film, suggests Depp understands something of the slippery discrepancy between cinema and reality.
Depp is 33 now. Does he feel acting is a fit job for a grown man, I wonder? "Sometimes you think: Oh my God, look what I do for a living. I'm uncomfortable with some things, like the sales side. On talk shows and stuff, you feel like a bit of a prostitute. It's kind of an occupational hazard. But I've had worse jobs, I've had worse paychecks. Working with Al Pacino, he's one of those actors who reminds you how much you like what you do, what a pleasure it is to do the job. He gave me a new respect for it."
Are you happier with who you are than you were five years ago? "I think so. Definitely. Five years ago I was doing my best to numb myself, feelings, thoughts, things from my past, my childhood, all those clichéd things. I was not the happiest guy in the world. But I don't think I'm much different really. I mean I'm happy, but I was happy then. I'm angry, but I was angry then. I think my heart is in the right place. I'm not a bad guy. You know, I don't want to get old in the sense that I don't want to get jaded, I don't want to get complacent, lazy. I do still feel 17 - I think I stopped growing at a certain point in my brain. Everything else ages, as you can see, but I do still feel 17, like that kid who was playing rock 'n roll clubs. When I did 'The Brave,' I can't say I approached it like a director. I was much more naïve, like a guy who wanted to make a drawing. Regardless of how good or bad it is - it's still my drawing."