The one actor Johnny Depp called too big for cinema: “He just absolutely owned it”
There are actors, there are movie stars, there are global superstars, and then there are the select few who transcend the silver screen to become icons. Johnny Depp has ticked a couple of those boxes throughout his career, but he was adamant only one thespian was so talented that cinema couldn’t contain them.
It’s entirely true that Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the best actors of his – or any other – generation, but it’s also true that more people know who Dwayne Johnson is. It’s also a fact that the films of Michael Bay have earned significantly more than Paul Thomas Anderson, Bong Joon-ho, and Yorgos Lanthimos combined, so recognition and fame aren’t necessarily tied to talent.
Not every actor dreams of cracking the A-list and becoming a household name, just like many of Hollywood’s highest-paid and most bankable stars know they’ll never get a sniff of an Academy Award. Only the most confident thespians would get into the business believing they can change it forever, and even fewer have actually managed to do it.
Marlon Brando definitely accomplished the latter, not that he cared much. His impact was so undeniable, powerful, and monumental that a clear line could be drawn between how actors approached their craft before he broke through and how the generations to come have mimicked his techniques in the decades since.
The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise propelled Depp to the top of the commercial pile, but even at his best, he wasn’t a groundbreaking, game-changing, or industry-shaking actor. His close friend certainly was, though, with the former Jack Sparrow reiterating to Vanity Fair that Brando was too far ahead of his time.
“It was revolutionary; it just changed everything,” he said. “The work he was doing, Streetcar, completely different fucking animal. And everybody changed their approach from that moment on. I don’t know what the fuck it is, but at that time – especially at that time – he had too much.”
In fact, Depp went so far as to suggest there was a hint of pre-ordained destiny involved in Brando being the right actor at the right time to push the medium to new heights. “He was placed in that spot for that particular thing,” he explained. “And, man, he cranked it. He just absolutely owned it.”
There’s a reason they say the brightest stars burn for the shortest time, with Brando one of the cliche’s most famous examples. He conquered the stage and took cinema by storm within a decade of his debut, only for the majority of his career to be spent weaving in and out of relevance, all of which was punctuated by the occasional reminder that he may well have been the best ever. Even if he wasn’t, then he’s comfortably the most influential.
