The performance Johnny Depp based on his dog
When director Wes Craven cast a 20-year-old musician from Kentucky – who didn’t actually have any acting experience – as the boyfriend of A Nightmare on Elm Street‘s protagonist, there is no way he or anyone else could’ve known what the future would hold for Johnny Depp. It’s certainly strange to watch the movie when you realise that the character who is pulled into a bed by Freddy Krueger and then regurgitated as a fountain of gore would one day become one of the biggest stars in the world.
But that didn’t happen for a little while later. Interestingly, the film that launched Depp into the big time is based on a theme park ride, as Depp’s career has been quite the rollercoaster. After that first role, his starring effort on the TV show 21 Jump Street turned Depp into something of a teen idol. He wasn’t particularly enamoured with this image, however, and started seeking more unique roles. Throughout the 1990s, he was more of a character actor who played quirky, unique parts and collaborated with many auteur filmmakers – most notably, Tim Burton.
Depp’s career changed again in 2003 when he appeared as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Many were convinced that the film would bomb, and one of the main reasons for this, aside from it being based on a theme park ride, was that Johnny Depp was not much of a movie star at the time. Still, he quickly silenced the naysayers with his gloriously entertaining performance as the drunken pirate, and this movie transformed him into a Hollywood megastar. Was this a good thing? That’s debatable.
Depp was brilliant as Captain Jack, but it led to him being typecast, and he was often relegated to playing hyperactive, Captain Jack-esque characters. His deeply off-putting turn as Willy Wonka in Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and his career-worst performance in the ghastly Mortdecai are perhaps the nadir of this, but there are many other bad examples too. Depp has continued to act in more serious, down-to-earth roles from time to time, but these have also been mixed bags.
From the early 2010s onward, Depp’s career declined, with his movies being less and less successful and his performances often falling short, although his mercurial, refreshingly understated turn as Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, in which he was one of the few bright spots, was much underrated. After his much-publicised legal issues in recent years, he has become persona non grata and hasn’t appeared in anything mainstream for several years. It looks unlikely he’ll return to being as big as he used to be, though one gets the sense he doesn’t necessarily want to.
If Depp focuses on working in smaller films again, that’d be no bad thing because the character actor stage of his career was where he really did his best work. One of his very finest roles was the title character in Edward Scissorhands, which marked his very first collaboration with Tim Burton. To craft this iconic performance, not only did Depp study Charlie Chaplin’s work in order to find ways to silently create a sympathetic figure, but he also based his performance on, of all things, his childhood dog.
When Depp took on the part of the shy, sweet outsider who just wants to be loved, he kept thinking of his childhood dog and its unconditional love and modelled his performance off of that. As odd as this may sound, he was actually right on the money, for the movie’s screenwriter, Caroline Thompson, had also thought of her dog when crafting the character. After this instantly iconic performance, it’s no surprise that Tim Burton kept coming back to Depp. The pair would eventually make a staggering eight movies together. That’s almost as many as Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro.
Depp was also instrumental in crafting Captain Jack Sparrow’s mannerisms and personality, and the character almost certainly wouldn’t have become such a cinematic icon without Depp. Once again, Depp really understood exactly what would make the role connect with audiences. More than anything else, all of this is a shining testament to Depp’s ability as an actor and his aptitude for crafting memorable, distinctive on-screen characters. It’s just a shame that, once he became a film star, Hollywood never knew exactly what to do with him.
