Depp's outrageous characters keep coming
On the face of it, Johnny Depp has done all he can to scuttle his image as a sex symbol. He's played a transvestite film director with a fetish for angora sweaters. He's not only played a journalist, he's played a journalist on drugs. He's played any number of live-action cartoon characters, and given voice to actual cartoon characters (on "SpongeBob SquarePants," for example). He's played a barber with a grudge and a razor, and had the temerity to sing Stephen Sondheim.
Still, as a female friend likes to say: "Johnny Depp? He's got it goin' on."
Yes, indeed. The actor, who returns to the screen May 20 as the swishbuckling Captain Jack Sparrow in "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," has managed to maintain his status as a Hollywood star while defying every expectation of what such stardom requires. Expectations? What we expect at this point is weirdness. And we get it as these 10 outrageous Depp roles attest:
1. ED WOOD (1994) -- Odd choices have actually been key to Depp's popularity, which blithely crosses demographic boundaries: Very young people like his crazy movies and actorly freedom; older young people like his hipness. Older older people -- even encrusted film critics -- like that he makes these crazy movies at all, and looks contemptuously amused while attending the Golden Globes. But "Ed Wood" is probably the epitome of eccentric Depp choices, one he imbued with a combination of artistic ambition, demented grins and utter delusion. The king of bad B movies ("Plan 9 From Outer Space"), Wood was the perfect vehicle for the actor's more outlandish instincts and the movie remains an underappreciated gem (although Martin Landau did win an Oscar for playing Bela Lugosi).
2. EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (1990) -- The first of seven films (thus far) with director Tim Burton, this offbeat fable about a young man with scissors for hands was Depp's first foray into the decidedly strange. Perhaps it was foretold: His film debut was "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984) and he's never quite left the macabre very far behind. "21 Jump Street," the TV crime series about cops infiltrating high schools, made the young Depp a teen idol, and that may been the trigger, the thing that sent him off in an entirely different directions -- including the warm embrace of Burton.
3. BON BON IN 'BEFORE NIGHT FALLS' (2000) -- In a portrayal that would have made Ed Wood proud, Depp plays a flamboyant, outrageously bewigged transvestite who smuggles the manuscripts of oppressed writer Reinaldo Arenas (Javier Bardem) out of Cuba. Depp does double duty in this Julian Schnabel epic, as both Bon Bon and Lt. Victor, a vicious military interrogator. Depp gets only about five minutes of screen time but is unforgettable.
4. THE MAD HATTER IN 'ALICE IN WONDERLAND' (2010) -- Depp was certainly mad, but multidimensional as well, bringing a great degree of humanity to one of his more excessive characterizations.
5. WILLY WONKA IN 'CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY' (2005) -- A less candy-coated movie than the Gene Wilder-powered musical of 1971, and one much closer to the dark tone of the Roald Dahl book, this Burton extravaganza features Depp making far too great an effort to be unusual. That his Willie Wonka so strongly suggests Michael Jackson makes it a little too creepy.
6. SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET (2007) -- This Burton-directed adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical was odd, but couldn't have been otherwise -- as the titular Victorian cutthroat, Depp sent an untold number of unwitting victims off his barber chair and into Mrs. Lovett's oven, while doing little damage to the composer's glorious music (Depp's duet with Alan Rickman on "Pretty Women" is actually quite disarming).
7. RAOUL DUKE IN 'FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS' (1998) -- "As your attorney I advise you to drink heavily": Terry Gilliam's adaptation of the Hunter S. Thompson novel, with Depp as the drug-addled and often hallucinating Thompson stand-in Raoul Duke, probably defines the actor as a vehicle of social outrage and willful derangement.
8. WILLIAM BLAKE IN 'DEAD MAN' (1995) -- Directed by indie icon Jim Jarmusch, this otherworldly Western featured Depp as an accountant who, after murdering a man and escaping west, begins a spiritual odyssey led by an Indian guide named Nobody (Gary Farmer). Depp has certainly done what might be call "straight" roles throughout his career -- from the mob-busting FBI agent in "Donnie Brasco" (1997) to John Dillinger in "Public Enemies" (2009) to, one could argue, the curious character he played in last year's much-derided so-called comedy "The Tourist." While William Blake wasn't the most outré role in his oeuvre, the movie around him made "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" (1993) seem positively conventional.
9. JACK SPARROW IN 'PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN' (2003-2011) -- Depp seems able to exploit Hollywood, rather than vice versa. The whole "Pirates" enterprise -- a movie based on a theme-park ride? -- looked like a distinct sellout when it first set sail. But the supposedly Keith Richards-inspired but definitely gay-accented Jack Sparrow made the whole thing a lot hipper than it might have been. Stranger tides, indeed.
10. JOHN WILMOT IN 'THE LIBERTINE' (2004) -- Even with Depp, sometimes you have to wonder. In this ornate period piece by first- and apparently last-time director Laurence Dunmore, Depp plays the licentious 17th century poet John Wilmot, aka the Earl of Rochester, who famously debauched his way to an early, syphilitic, alcoholic grave. Depp is a convincingly reprobate member of the Restoration court of Charles II (John Malkovich), but the movie has to rank as the least-seen film in what has otherwise been a very visible and entertaining career.
Blackbeard vs. mascara man
"On Stranger Tides," the fourth in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series, was adapted from a 1987 novel of the same name by sci-fi/fantasy writer Tim Powers, whose specialty is creating occult and supernatural scenarios around historical characters. In this case, it's Blackbeard, aka Edward Teach, the notorious English pirate who operated in the West Indies during the early 18th century.
Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom, Jonathan Pryce and several other familiar "Pirates" faces will be absent this time around as Blackbeard, played by Ian McShane, and his daughter (Penélope Cruz) lock horns with the heavily mascaraed Capt. Jack Sparrow, who, along with Barbarosa (Geoffrey Rush), goes in search of the Fountain of Youth. As long as the expected fountain of youthful dollars keeps flowing, this is hardly the last we'll see of any of these characters. In fact, plans for a fifth movie are already in the works.
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