The Libertine

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How did you approach the character of John Wilmot?

Very carefully! It was almost like an excavation in terms of the approach, because there's a lot of available material out there as well as his actual written works. There are a lot of biographies about him, each with a different angle on his life, so using those sources helped a lot. I guess from a distance, when you first think about the guy, the whole surface element really becomes more of an obstacle than anything else - which is yes, basically he drank himself to death and shagged himself to death. But what fascinated me was how did he arrive at that place? Was his drinking recreational? Certainly not. Was his sex recreational? Certainly not. He was a very complicated man. During my research I got to know everything about the guy, but the best thing was I got the opportunity to go to the British Library and peruse his letters, and that opened up a whole new side to him for me. He was a deeply caring father; deeply caring husband; wrote deeply moving letters to the women in his life. But he was just deeply plagued with, and tormented by, pains in his life. He medicated himself to such a degree that it took him down a nasty road.

Did you have anyone in mind when you came to play the character?

No, not really. Just him. I did my best to bring to life a guy that I had read about and tried to do him some justice. He's had a tarnished image and has been written off as a has-been for centuries - a debauched, drunken satirist, hedonistic. Those things might have been ingredients but there was far more too him than that.

What was the shoot itself like for you? A baptism of fire into low-budget British filmmaking?

Oh man, it was great. The experience of shooting the film was amazing. It was exhausting on every level, but it was great. We were given a limited amount of time to shoot the film, and the screenplay itself is an epic biography of the guy in a very short period of time. It was very intense, and somedays you'd end up shooting eight to ten pages of very emotional spiel.

It's funny to see you share a screen with Johnny Vegas, something I thought I would never see - even given your love of British comedy. What was he like?

Sometimes you expect someone to be something and they turn out to be completely different. Certainly he is the Johnny Vegas we know from the stage, but what left all of us - and the crew - with our jaws on the ground was his unbelievable focus, and how seriously he took the work itself. He was totally professional and, obviously, sober! He's a very funny guy but also very gentle.

Tell us about Laurence Dunmore. It's a long time since you've worked with a first-time director...

First I've got to tip my hat to John Malkovich for locating Laurence and just knowing that this was the guy to do the film, because how could he have known? Laurence is definitely one of those names who's going to be around for a long time. Here was a guy doing his first film who was totally uncompromising in his vision. He just got as dirty as anyone, getting down in the mud, operating, shooting, bringing it all together. He's a real force. We still talk at least once a week and are actively looking for more stuff to do together. I think he's a brilliant filmmaker.

And did the experience inspire you to want to get behind the camera again and direct another movie?

I've got a sneaking suspicion that at some point I'll end up directing something again. For the moment I'm just going to sit back and learn from these guys. I've been lucky enough to work with these incredible filmmakers - Tim Burton, Lasse Hallström, Mike Newell... it's a pretty great list - so I'll just keep sponging as much as I can off them.

Johnny Depp in "The Libertine"

Everyone in Hollywood must face the same devilish question of compromise at some point. Many, in exchange for fame, fortune and a good table at Ashton Kutcher's restaurant, will happily trade in their artistic aspirations for a big-budget,
roman-numeral-bearing remake co-starring Tom Arnold as the zany neighbor next door. Others, meanwhile, cling so tightly to their anti-commercial virtues that they boast about their new John Sayles movie opening soon in one theater as their tears fall into the mac-and-cheese dinner they've prepared in their studio apartment.

Remarkably, Johnny Depp has successfully straddled this line for more than two decades, earning himself an audience filled with equal numbers of shrieking "Pirates" fanatics and turtleneck-clad film students joyously reciting "Dead Man" dialogue. It seems like part of his master plan, then, that the Kentucky-born actor would spend November simultaneously shooting the world's most high-profile sequels, debuting a controversial unrated art film and receiving a career tribute at age 42.

"I'd do it over exactly the same way if I had to do it over," Depp grinned through gold-capped teeth at the recent premiere of his bawdy drama "The Libertine." "I wouldn't do anything over."

To Depp, that credo now includes "The Libertine," a sexy 17th-century biopic that the ratings board attempted to slap with an NC-17. The star hopes that a decent percentage of the crowd that recently made "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" a hit will give the much-smaller movie a similar chance when it opens wide following this month's Oscar-qualifying sneak previews.

"I can just say that getting the film made [was tough], but you feel that about every movie you make," said Depp, who stars as real-life poet John Wilmot. The second Earl of Rochester, Wilmot's enormous appetites for sex, liquor and debauchery (he is believed to have created the world's first printed piece of pornography) contributed to his death at age 33. Needless to say, the role is a long, long way from Willy Wonka. "Suddenly, you're in the ring, and doing the film, and you go, 'It's amazing that we got this thing off the ground.' "

"[Depp] has been involved with the project for about 10 years," first-time director Laurence Dunmore marveled of his leading man. "He went to see John Malkovich play Rochester on the stage. ... We went back to Johnny because he was the only person I saw being able to play Rochester the way I had in my vision. When he actually came to perform the role, it was obvious that he was born to play him."

"We did this film in 45 days, really down in the mud," Depp recalled, admitting that even the racy result (which co-stars Malkovich and Samantha Morton) only begins to scratch the surface of the life that Wilmot embraced so lustily. "If you did a true biopic of Rochester, it could have gone in many, many directions."

"I [now] play Charles II, the King of England," Malkovich said of handing over his stage character to Depp. "I certainly wouldn't have had any pointers for Johnny; he seems to have done quite well without me or my advice."

Although Depp received a brief shore leave from filming parts two and three of "Pirates of the Caribbean" (simultaneously shooting at various global locations) for "The Libertine" premiere, brief flashes of his trademark grin served as reminders that Jack Sparrow remained close at hand. "They're about as permanent as they can be," Depp laughed about his fronts, "until the dentist scrapes them off my skull."

The actor further reported that, when he received the scripts for the sequels (the first of which hits theaters in July), he was pleasantly surprised with the tender directions in which the filmmakers took the rough-edged Captain Sparrow. "There is a nice opportunity for Jack to get a little bit introspective here and there," he said, "which is kind of a different angle on the guy."

Earlier in the same evening, Depp attended an American Film Institute event held in his honor. Peppering his speech with lovingly self-deprecating jabs at his old appearances, the star fought back uncomfortable feelings of self-congratulation while watching clips from a body of work that contrasts "Cry-Baby" with "The Man Who Cried," and "Edward Scissorhands" with "Ed Wood." As "The Libertine" hits theaters, and two "Pirates" blockbusters prepare to follow, Depp seems certain to proudly continue walking his tightrope.

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