Johnny Depp Quotes
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Gossip
The only gossip I'm interested in is things from the Weekly World News - 'Woman's bra bursts, 11 injured'. That kind of thing.Mankind
"I never had the brightest view of human nature. I think humanity - society, at least --is violent. It's not getting any better. I don't think I'm cynical, but I do think maybe the world is more... sinful than ever before."MTV Interview
MTV's Ryan J. Downey caught up with Depp to talk about his impending reunion with the similarly eccentric Tim Burton, his new tattoo and what turns him off when someone hands him a screenplay.MTV: When it comes to Stephen King movies — there are really good ones and really bad ones. When you heard they had a Stephen King movie they wanted you to check out, what were you looking for to make sure that you did a good one?
Johnny Depp: Well, it was weird, because my mind was sort of made up about four or five pages into the screenplay. It was that well done, that well written. David Koepp did an amazing job of adapting the novella. And by about page five, six, I had a huge emotional investment into the character, into the story and into the plot, and I allowed it to take me on this journey where I was sure it was going to end up one way and it went the complete opposite. I was so shocked and surprised by the story that there was no way around it. I had to do it.
MTV: You have a reputation for being choosy with your roles. What are some of the things that a Johnny Depp movie cannot have — what are some red flags that when you see them in a script, you immediately say, "I'm not doing that"?
Johnny: That's a good question. ... I guess you know you're in bad shape when you're like on about page three and the guy's gonna rip his shirt off or something. Anytime they start necking with several women, you're in trouble. I don't know, for me, I like to be surprised. It's nice to be surprised and it's rare that you are surprised.
MTV: You've still got the tattoo of a sparrow on your arm that we saw in "Pirates of the Caribbean." That wasn't just a fake tattoo for the movie?
Depp: This guy here? That's my tattoo I got for my boy, for my son, Jack. This was the tattoo that I wore in "Pirates of the Caribbean" for Captain Jack Sparrow, except in the film he was flying the opposite way. He was flying away from me, so I turned him around [when I made it permanent]. You have to have it flying towards you. He's gotta always fly back to you.
MTV: He'll probably like your next movie, Tim Burton's remake of "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory."
Depp: Yeah, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory." It's Tim's version of Roald Dahl's classic book and it's gonna be a wild ride. Tim and I have had a couple of meetings, sat down and had some talks about where he wants to go, where we need to go. And I think it's gonna be great, you know? Big shoes [to fill], though. Gene Wilder did such an awesome job in that film in the early '70s, so I mean, taking that character of Willy Wonka and going somewhere completely different is ... he sort of made the job infinitely more difficult for me.
Insanity
"I think everybody's nuts, to tell you the truth. I think everybody is absolutely out of their heads all the time. Watch people sometimes. Just watch people. People are absolutely insane. They just are. Look at us!"On having children
"You can't plan the kind of deep love that results in children. Fatherhood was not a conscious decision. It was part of the wonderful ride I was on. It was destiny; kismet. All the math finally worked."Thanks to DEPP-aholic
Depp Acted Odd to Gain Control of CareerJohnny Depp arrives for the 76th annual Academy Awards Sunday, Feb. 29, ...More...
NEW YORK - Johnny Depp isn't adverse to acting a little weird _ even off camera.The actor, whose role in "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" earned him a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination, said he has disliked conformity since his career began.
Depp told the latest edition of Time magazine that in the 1980s he was so desperate to get out of playing heartthrob detective Tom Hanson on Fox's "21 Jump Street" that he purposely wore odd clothes and spoke in tongues on the set.
The producers, though, didn't buy the nutty routine."It was a weird thing not to be in control of your own image," he said. "I remember saying to myself, Man, when I'm free of this, I'm going to do only the things that I want to do. I'm going to go down whatever road I decide."
Depp, 40, whose credits include "Sleepy Hollow," "Ed Wood," "Edward Scissorhands" and "Blow," said he picks scripts to keep himself and the audience off-kilter.
"All the amazing people that I've worked with _ Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman have told me consistently: Don't compromise. Do your work, and if what you're giving is not what they want, you have to be prepared to walk away."
Inspiration for his portrayal of Mort Rainey
Brian Wilson. I remember hearing those famous stories, or maybe myths, about him in this very reclusive period where he didn't leave his house and had sand brought in to cover his living-room floor. Then he dropped the baby grand on top of that and wrote these great beach classics. That was the level of reclusiveness I was looking for.Asked if it wasn't irresponsible to portray pirates as likeable
Well, how do we know they weren't? [Laughs.] Irresponsible? Hmmm...maybe. It might very well be. But who wouldn't want to take to the high seas and wave a sword? What a ball that would be. That's why I'd love to play [Jack Sparrow] again. It'd be purely for selfish reasons; he's such a fun guy.Asked about Keith Richard's response to Jack Sparrow
I ran into him in New York a couple of months after Pirates was released. He was great about it. We've known each other for a long time...he is a pirate. Apparently, he's even on the DVD. That's really sweet of him. And how cool is it that Keith Richards is on a Disney DVD? That's a coup in itself.Mexican food in Paris?
You know what? It's at my house. Yeah. My girl's a good cook; she can make burritos, tacos, whatever you want. Otherwise, you can't find good Mexican food in France. No Mexican food and no doughnuts in Paris. Not that I'm a big doughnut fan. Anyway, there's other stuff there that's just as bad for you.Speaking of food - Johnny was asked What's tastier, Mr. Wonka: Scrumdidilyumptious Bars or Everlasting Gobstoppers?
Scrumdidilyumptious Bars. But there's one even better, the Willy Wonka Scrunch Bar. They don't make it anymore. It was just unbelievable. If I have anything to do with it, the Scrunch Bar will be coming back--with my mug on it. Why not?Thanking people for his Oscar nomination.
God. Being nominated was such a surprise, such a shock. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. Being nominated is plenty, actually. I'd just thank the people out there who have been with my up-and-down, weird-road, strange career and supported me and stuck with me all these years. I mean, they're my boss. That's what keeps me working.His favorite painting in the Louvre
Does it have to be the Louvre? Oh...there's too many. The painting I'm unbelievably fascinated with at the moment is Picasso's Guernica. I think it's in Madrid. In the Louvre...well, of course, the Mona Lisa. You look at it and go,"Yes. It's great, especially for its time." But when you read about it, the thing really starts to take shape and come alive. It still fascinates me.Did you ever seen the porn flick Edward Penishands?
I certainly did. I absolutely did. And there was a sequel as well--Edward Penishands 2. I think it was either Tim [Burton] or John Waters who sent it to me. It might have been both. Tim and I were both quite proud they decided to do that. It was low budget and cheesy, but it was hilarious to watch. Those hands...they served him well.
Do you like everybody?
I've always liked everybody. [Laughs.] I'm not sure everybody likes me. Everybody thinks that I don't live in the United States anymore, that I live in France, which is not true. I just happen to have a home in France, as well, because my kids are half French. And that interview where suddenly I'm anti-American? It was untrue. It blew over quick, but it was an ugly moment. You don't want people believing that stuff. If I had said it, I'd take full responsibility. But it wasn't what I meant.
Asked if he ever plagerized in school
Never papers. You know what I used to do? It's horrible. When I was a little kid, and I guess all kids do it, I copied other people's test answers. It was a question of survival. You do what you've got to do. At least, that's what it felt like to me. I couldn't take another failing grade.
Playing Captain Jack Sparrow Again
"I went through a decompression period after the first film," he said. "If you're really connected with a character, you always do to some degree. You miss the guy. You miss being that person. The only thing that was in the back of my mind was the hope that there would be a sequel some day, so that I could meet him again."From Emma - Time Magazine March 15, 2004
Doing It Depp's Wayby Josh Tyrangiel
By taking on weird roles for even weirder reasons, he has become Hollywood's most unusual star
Hollywood agents don't get pity. They get 10%. But spare a kind thought for Johnny Depp's agent, Tracy Jacobs. For more than a decade, her client--one of the world's best actors and best-looking human beings--has consistently turned down glamorous leading-man roles in large, profitable movies so that he could play a chorus of memorable (to those who saw them) character parts, like Cesar, the Gypsy horseman in The Man Who Cried, or Bon Bon, the Cuban transvestite prostitute who smuggles prison contraband in his rectum in Before Night Falls. Only Crispin Glover's representatives have suffered more for their percentage.
"Tracy's taken a lot of heat over the years," says Depp. "She has bosses and higher-ups, and every time I take on another strange project, they're going, 'Jesus Christ! When does he do a movie where he kisses the girl? When does he get to pull a gun out and shoot somebody? When does he get to be a f______ man for a change? When is he finally going to do a blockbuster?'"
In 2003 Depp did his blockbuster, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and earned Disney $ 305 million. His Captain Jack Sparrow didn't kiss or shoot anybody, and he kind of sashayed through most of the film, but Pirates proved that with the right material, Depp can be a huge multiplex draw. His long-suffering agent didn't want him to take the part. "He was pitched the movie without a script," recalls Jacobs. "They basically said, 'We're going to make a movie out of this theme-park ride. Want to do it?' And he said, 'Great! I'm in. I believe in the idea.' I just thought, What idea, you lunatic?"
Now that he has blockbuster status and a surprise Screen Actors Guild award, prestige scripts are piling up on Depp's doorstep. He reads them--"You kind of owe it to the writer, I think," he says--but he has no plans to try to fashion them into any kind of sensible mainstream career. Why start now? "Nothing changes," says Depp, who is in Wales shooting The Libertine, in which he plays the Earl of Rochester, a 17th century poet and pornographer who reportedly died of syphilis. "The challenge for me is still to do something that hasn't been beaten into the moviegoing consciousness. Otherwise what am I in it for?
The dough? Well, the dough is cool, but I don't want to be 85 years old and have my grandkids go, 'Ewwww. Grandpa did some dumb s___.' I'd rather have them say, 'Wow, man, you're nuts!'"
As proof of his willingness to be thought insane, Depp's first post-Pirates movie is Secret Window, in theaters this Friday. He plays Mort Rainey, a successful writer being stalked by a psychotic dairy farmer. Before the movie ends, for reasons too crucial to the plot to fully explain, Mort manically consumes the equivalent of Iowa's annual corn harvest. But that's not the crazy part. "Much of the first half of the movie is just Mort in a cabin by himself not doing things," says Secret Window's writer-director, David Koepp, a man you would expect to have a vested interest in making the movie sound a bit more dynamic.
Depp claims he was riveted by Koepp's adaptation of Stephen King's novella--and the movie does pick up to become a Misery--meets--The Shining kind of thriller. But it was the character's inactivity that really hooked him. "It's always great to get in the ring with actors you respect," Depp says. "But when you're in there by yourself, it's quite challenging. You're not reacting, which is mostly what acting is. Instead, you just have to be. There are scenes where it's like two minutes of just scratching the tablecloth. That interests me." He took the movie to scratch a tablecloth? "I'm not really sure why he wanted to do it," says Koepp. "I'm grateful, but it's hard to be certain of what motivates Johnny. It's possible he just wanted to play a character named Mort."
The whimsy that drives Depp's career springs from his early days as an actor. It is easy to forget that he was the Ashton Kutcher of his era, the hot young star of a mediocre show on Fox. "I wouldn't say [21 Jump Street] was misery because it was a privileged opportunity. But it was very, uh ... uncomfortable," says Depp. So desperate was he to get out of playing Officer Tom Hanson, a dreamy high school narc, that Depp says he made like MASH's Corporal Klinger, dressing up in odd clothes and speaking in tongues on the set in hopes of getting out of his contract. The producers didn't bite. "It was a weird thing not to be in control of your own image," he says. "I remember saying to myself, Man, when I'm free of this, I'm going to do only the things that I want to do. I'm going to go down whatever road I decide."
In addition to choosing scripts based on his own internal logic, Depp decided that once he got jobs, he wouldn't worry too much about keeping them. "All the amazing people that I've worked with--Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman," he says, "have told me consistently: Don't compromise. Do your work, and if what you're giving is not what they want, you have to be prepared to walk away." Or get canned. Depp came perilously close to being fired from Pirates of the Caribbean when his melding of Keith Richards and Pepe Le Pew freaked out a few senior Disney executives. "It has actually happened a number of times," Depp says. "At the end of the first take on the first day they say 'Cut,' and then ... silence. I mean silence that's deafening. And you're constantly waiting for the knock on the door--'Uh, Johnny? It's not gonna work, man.' But what are you going to do? It's only a movie."
This nonchalance is no act. Depp enjoys being in movies, and he says he enjoyed attending the Oscars, but he saw none of his fellow nominees' performances and guesses the last movie he saw was Pirates--and only because he had to. "I like not knowing what's happening out there--who's doing what, how they were, what the box office was," he says. "Even when I'm in the soup bowl of Hollywood, I just play Barbies and hang out with the kiddies."
Depp; his longtime girlfriend, French actress Vanessa Paradis; and their children Lily-Rose, 4, and Jack, 1, spend about half their time in Los Angeles and half in the south of France. Depp still owns the L.A. club the Viper Room, but at 40, he's no longer a regular. "I swing by every now and again. But being a dad, waking up at 5:30 in the morning to make the bottle for the baby, you start thinking about being in a nightclub until 2 in the morning, and you go, Nah. I've done it. No point in repeating yourself."
In violation of the no-repeat principle, Depp has signed on for a Pirates of the Caribbean sequel. Otherwise, his choices remain abidingly idiosyncratic. He'll play J.M. Barrie in Neverland, which traces Barrie's inspiration for the Peter Pan story; he has a small part in a French-language film, Ils Se Marierent et Eurent Beaucoup d'Enfants, and in June he teams for the fourth time with director Tim Burton to begin work on a long-discussed remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. "I hope it's going to be quite weird," says Depp. "Weird and wonderful."
Acting
"With any part you play, there is a certain amount of yourself in it. There has to be, otherwise it's just not acting. It's lying."When asked about Oscar chances
Johnny Depp to the Sun-Times summer of 2003, two weeks before Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl opened: "What did you say? An Oscar nomination. Yeah, right... But if you want to write that, it would be OK with me. But a nomination? Come on."Johnny speaks about his drug past
'I went through a stage of smoking opium. When you smoke opium you just want to lie still. It makes you completely relaxed. I'm through with it now - it was so nice it was dangerous. 'I hated cocaine but I used to like absinthe but it's like marijuana - drink too much and you suddenly realise why Van Gogh cut off his ear. 'These days I just drink a little red wine. I'm boring."What would he do if he won the Oscar?
"I'll probably be a very, very old man. I'll take some Geritol and head off to bed."Who he is
"I'm 30 different people sometimes. One day you wake up and you're somebody else, nowhere near who you were when you went to sleep. Unfortunately, I feel more comfortable in front of the movie camera than I do in real life." -On the Red Carpet Oscars 2004 (and on Ryan Seacrest Show)
"This is a horse of a different color, absolutely. It's not a bad way to spend the afternoon." "I was shocked and I am still shocked. I'll probably always be shocked."
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