 Johnny Depp talks Pirates, Hollywood, France and high school |
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Anyone who saw Johnny Depp on Jay Leno saw that he still had his gold teeth in from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Before even that appearance, when we met Depp for interviews, we were struck by the sparkling chompers. That wasn’t all. He still had the goatee and a lot of the costume put together.
But Johnny Depp is awesome, so he can be a little weird. If this is what serves all his eccentric characters, so be it. Pirates is no exception, as he turns a traditional action hero into a total goof. This guy wobbles and stumbles, goes bug-eyed but still manages to save the day.
Your teeth are still in?
They’re still there, yeah. I never had a chance to take them out.
What are they?
They’re gold and platinum.
Are they caps?
It was a cap, it was molded to my teeth to fit over my teeth and then they bonded them onto my teeth.
Was the studio ever resistant to your characterization of Jack Sparrow?
Well, yeah. Early on for quite a while.
How did you fight back?
I remember I had two more gold teeth and there were a few that wanted them gone, in fact wanted them all gone. And they wanted the braids in my beard gone and they wanted a lot of the trinkets and things gone. I just basically said, “I respect you guys. I’ll compromise to some degree which means I’ll take two teeth out. Cool. But anything beyond that I feel is compromising the integrity of the character and I’m not willing to do that. You’ve got to trust me. You’ve got to let me do what you hired me to do and if you’re not happy with doing that, then you’ve got to replace me.”
How did you develop your walk?
The way I walked, well, it was a couple of things. To me, it was like this guy who had spent a very, very long time on the ocean battling the elements. It was a guy who had spent way too much time in the sun, so maybe his brain was literally cooked a bit. And he was way more comfortable on the deck of a ship in terms of the rhythm of the ocean than he was on dry land. And I think he would also be a guy who would understand that, like he could take that and use it to his advantage, as if to hypnotize someone. He’d kind of go back and forth and hypnotize them, kind of like a cobra, moving target. So, that’s where it came from. I thought he would hate being on land.
How did you approach the comedy?
I’m always, again, a sucker for [comedy]. Whenever I find an opportunity to throw in humor on any level, even when it doesn’t apply, [I will]. I mean, I’ve done it in scenes in Blow and other things where it probably shouldn’t have been there but it just seemed to work at the time. So, I’m always trying to throw as much humor into a part as I can. This guy, I knew this guy so well, I felt so comfortable playing him that again, I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help myself.
How has your relationship with Hollywood changed?
The five years that I’ve been living in France and in the States to some degree a little bit, because I’m not a resident of France, has done wonders for my relationship with Hollywood.
And also having kids, I’m so removed from it that I don’t know anything. I mean, I don't know who anybody is. I don't know who’s famous. I don't know who’s not famous. I don't know who’s rich, who’s poor, who’s successful, who’s a drag. I don't know anybody. I don't know what made money and what didn’t make money. And it’s great. So, I come in just completely ignorant of all of it and it feels really good. Because then, I don’t have to think about anything but my work and I don’t have to worry about what anybody else is doing or anything. I just think about my work.
How does it feel to be a high school dropout who’s done well?
Isn’t that something? Well, I can only say it worked for me. It’s not for everybody. I wouldn’t recommend it to most kids, but the situation that I was in, it was inevitable. I had to leave. School’s a weird thing. I’m not sure it works. It’s debatable, but I think that the way school is now, I’m not sure teachers- - certainly there are some who are very, very good but there’s a lot of teachers who I don’t think care about teaching. Therefore, it’s not inspirational for kids to learn when they’ve got a teacher who basically is just taking a paycheck. And there’s also you’ve got to deal with some kind of weird cop syndrome and the abuse of authority and all that stuff. I just couldn’t take it anymore.
What’s the greatest piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Don’t ever take any sh*t off anybody. It think that’s probably the best advice I’ve ever gotten.
Who told you that?
My mom.
Are you up for a Pirates sequel?
Yeah. The amount of fun that I had on this film was criminal really. There were moments where the director and I would sort of look at each other and just go, “Can you actually believe that we get to do this and we’re getting paid for this? Like this is our job.” Yeah, if there was a sequel- - in a perfect world, it’s Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio writing it, it’s Gore Verbinski directing it, I’d be there in a second.
~ Fred Topel
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