Interview: Johnny Depp

Johnny Depp’s revelation that he may soon quit acting for a quieter life has provoked the expected storm of anguish and sarcasm.

“No!” shriek the diehard fans in unison. “Go be quirky somewhere else.”

The consensus in the ‘Yes’ camp appears to be that Depp has squandered his talent and that the patience of serious film lovers ran out long ago.

There was a time when Depp’s trademark quirkiness made him a unique property. Films like What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Dead Man, Donnie Brasco (possibly the best thing he has ever done) and The Libertine hinted at a fearless performer.

He had something – something different. It was seen again in Public Enemies, with Depp as an impossibly handsome John Dillinger. Channel that into an off-kilter pirate film with supernatural overtones and Depp’s on-screen eccentricity became box office magic. Cult equalled cash and, in a wink, one of the movies’ most unusual performers sold out.

There are those who look to Depp’s abandonment of one genius – the erratic Terry Gilliam – and his embracing of another, Tim Burton, a safe bet when set alongside Gilliam – as the beginning of the malaise. There have been eight films for Burton between Edward Scissorhands in 1990 and last year’s Dark Shadows. With Gilliam he made Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and staggered through The Man Who Killed Don Quixote before it collapsed. The Gilliam relationship now seems dead. “He’s Tim Burton’s friend now,” quipped Gilliam at Bradford International Film Festival two years ago. And as the Burton/Depp partnership thrives – there will be a sequel to Alice in Wonderland in 2015 – so Depp has forged another friendship with Gore Verbinski, the man who has helmed the three films in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Depp will make Pirates 5 next year.

Before that, however, is The Lone Ranger. And perhaps this is the film – set to lose an estimated $150m at the box office – that has prompted the ageless Depp’s talk of retirement at the age of 50.

Depp plays Tonto against Armie Hammer’s gauche Lone Ranger.

It’s an eccentric characterisation to rank alongside anything he presented as Captain Jack Sparrow. Yet Depp claims his intention was to honour the Native American race.

“When I was a little kid I’d been told growing up that we had some degree of native American blood in us. I always found that a point of pride,” he says about playing Tonto.

“So when it came to cowboys and Indians I most certainly did not want to be John Wayne. I wanted to be one of the Indians. [I wanted] to try to slay the dragon of the cliché of the Native American as lesser than the white man.

“Before Columbus made his faulty remark that he thought he’d landed in India and named them Indians, they were called the human beings. That’s how they should be represented: a great culture, a great people, with unbelievable humour. If you think Tonto was eccentric, spend some time [with them]. They’re funny people, man.”

Much has been made of Depp’s mugging and gurning as Tonto. He was allowed to indulge himself royally. Yet listening to Depp hints at a different film entirely. He describes Tonto, with his face covered in black bars, as “an opportunity”.

“To me it looked as if you were dissecting the man in quarters. There was the damaged child on this side, and here was the great warrior. It’s one of those things; you get away with it or you don’t. I feel like my intention was good with the character.”

Flash back to just over a decade ago and Depp was almost sacked from the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie when studio execs baulked at his swaggering turn as the twitchy, cowardly buccaneer.

“They wanted to fire me so bad they could taste it,” he recalls.

“And when I spoke to one of the executives at the time I said, ‘You’re right. You should fire me. But you’ll have to pay me for my time’. It was something that they couldn’t quite get a handle on.

“At the time it was nothing particularly new for me. I’ve always approached characters the same way. Captain Jack just happened to get a little more attention, and then what happens is (that) you find these things and put them together.”

Depp enjoys executive producer status on The Lone Ranger. He calls receiving the credit “a beautiful gesture” from producer Jerry Bruckheimer and claims 
he “didn’t do anything” to merit it.

Bruckheimer disagrees and cites Depp’s early involvement in script meetings as key to understanding what they all wanted to achieve.

The angle appears to be simple: a dignified approach to Native American culture, with that trademark quirky humour. One wonders whether the film that emerged is the one they all wanted to make.

Says Depp: “As Gore and Jerry and I discussed early, early on, when there was just the very seedling of a story, or a screenplay, an idea basically, we all agreed that first and foremost that the Native Americans must be represented with the dignity and the integrity that we know them to have. 

“To try and show what crimes were committed against them, especially at that time, as progress was bashing its way westward.

“It was important to also take the way the Native Americans have been portrayed in cinema for however long cinema’s been around, to take that idea of them, the cliché of them as savages, and flip that on its head.”

And retirement? Depp turned 50 in June. Does the quiet life loom?

“I’m old,” he says, adding that acting is “a strange job for a grown man. I don’t think I’ve developed a taste for acting yet.  I’m not sure I ever will, to be honest.”

The Lone Ranger (12A) is out now.