Johnny Depp plays Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, a performance that will go down in the books as one of most memorable ever. ComingSoon.net asked Depp how he prepared for the role in the action film."He came from many directions, old Captain Jack," says Depp. "The first thing that came to mind was I was trying to figure out what rock stars would have to do with sort of pirates in the sense that it's like the equivalent of - the pirate of the 18th century seemed to me the rock and roll star of today. And to me the greatest rock n' roll star of all time, the coolest rock n' roll star of all time is Keith Richards, hands down. So, yeah, I kind of incorporated the idea of Keith. Not like an imitation of Keith or anything but just that wisdom that he carries, that sort of confidence that he has, that attack that he has. So I got that on one side and on the other side I took a little bit of this cartoon character that I've always loved when I was a kid, his name was Pepe Le Pew. Yeah, the skunk, Pepe Le Pew who was the skunk who smelled horrible, but was absolutely convinced that he was the ultimate ladies' man. You know the guy, he'd fall in love with this cat and the cat quite clearly despised him but Pepe Le Pew sort of read it as, 'Oh she's just playing hard to get. Oh she's just shy.' And then I thought of Jack as this constantly moving organism that would shape himself to whatever situation you were in to see what he would get out of the situation."
In the film, his character succeeds because people underestimate him. "I thought that Captain Jack would be one of those guys that people would look at and go, 'We can get anything passed this guy. Don't worry about nothing.' But Captain Jack would be hip to it."
One thing Johnny Depp didn't have to prepare for was a romantic interest and he didn't have a problem with that. "Yeah, the pressure's off." The same goes for his character, who wasn't the pretty boy. "There wasn't that pressure of, 'My God, what's the poster going to look like?,' you know. Although I think they were a little bit worried about that earlier on, some of the executives, understandably. But it was just nice to have the opportunity to play a pirate, because whenever someone comes up to say, 'Well should he be that dirty? He's a little greasy or this or that.' You always had the safety net of, 'Pirate! He's a pirate.' That would kind of stop them in their tracks."
Jack Sparrow isn't one who would visit the dentist on a regular basis, and it shows. "I had these veneers, these caps to fit over my teeth and they were bonded onto my real teeth. Yeah, they're real all right. Getting them off is going to be interesting" Depp said the teeth was just one of the things that added to the Sparrow's look. "I just thought that when you're building the history for the character, I always thought that Captain Jack would probably have lost a tooth. I'm imaging the dentistry back then was slightly worse than today - at least. So he probably picked up a piece of gold, fashioned it into a tooth and just stuck it up his gum, that kind of thing. But all of it, in terms of the costume, the hair, the dreads, the knick-knacks and stuff hanging out of my hair and the braids on the beard, all of it helped greatly. You're working from the outside in and you're working from the inside out at the same time."
Depp had a hard time saying goodbye to the character. "It's like you go through a period of decompression after the film, after playing the guy and depression. I was real irritable and just kind of, just sort of melancholy. And I realized I just missed Captain Jack. I had felt so comfortable being him and being in that skin that suddenly you go, 'Am I ever going to see him again? Will I ever meet him again? Will I ever be him again?'"
If it was up to him, he would definitely play Sparrow again. "I hope so. I'd love to." Depp is signed for a sequel but does mention that's not a guarantee you'll see him in a sequel. "Disney might say, 'I think we've had plenty of Johnny Depp now, let's move on to someone else.' We don't know whether they're going to make a sequel or not. I hope they do. I had such a ball playing the guy. I'd love to do it again."
Captain Jack Sparrow is definitely a highlight of the film. Depp tells us that he was able to provide lots of input. "I just felt I knew this guy so well, this character so well that there was certain things that would come into my brain and it was like it had to come out. I couldn't hold it in. You know, if it was during a take and it was an improvisation and I had to spew it, it had to go, or if it was something I felt very strongly about I would go to the writers and say, 'Look I think I've got to add this thing. We have to do some work here.' And they were incredibly receptive and open to that."
Compared to Johny Depp, his co-star Orlando Bloom is a relative newcomer who is rising to the top quickly. Did Depp give him any advice on what to do in his career? "Well because it all started out for me early on when I was sort of thrown onto the road, there were a number of battles that I had to fight and it was obvious that I had to fight them, to me, one at a time. I was going against the grain because I knew that if I continued on in the way that [agents] wanted me to continue on it was death, it was just going to be over with. After having gone through that over the years, and knowing Orlando just coming up the ranks now, I know what they're going to bombard him with. I know what they're going to try to turn him into. And it's just a question of just standing straight and saying, 'No. I'm not going to be what you want me to be. I'm going to be what I want to be. For good or ill, for right or wrong I'll do what I want to do.'"Depp also talked to us about his upcoming projects, of which a 21 Jump Street movie is not one. "Somebody sent me a fax one day it said that in the newspaper, or something, it said that there was this '21 Jump Street' movie that was going to be made and that I was going to be in it, which I thought was pretty funny because I had never heard of it before. I think that'd be great. I think they should do it. I mean they should have, they should get really, really good comedy writers and dive right in. It's going to be like 'Brady Bunch' or something, isn't it?"
He's also got J.M. Barrie's Neverland coming up, about the real-life author of the children's classic Peter Pan. "Oh that was wild. He's a dark guy - J.M. Barrie," says Depp. "I'd like say it was a lot of fun but it wasn't. Just in terms of playing him, it was a bit rough. But I think it's going to be an interesting film because it's kind of family oriented but at the same time there's a real depth, a real weight to it. A tragic quality. Barrie was amazing, he was incredibly comfortable around little kids and totally rigid around adults. You know, very strange guy."
Depp says that he would still be interested in completing Terry Gilliam's The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, which started filming September, 2000, in Spain and got hit with numerous production problems and was put on hold. "We've talked about it every time I speak to Terry. He's still very, very enthusiastic about getting Quixote back on the block and we'll see. If he wants to do that and if he's able to do that, I'd be there in a second because it was really going to be a great movie. It was really going to be Terry Gilliam's greatest hits. He was sort of another skunk, (my character) Toby Grossini. He was really going to be a fun character and we were having a ball, in spite of everything that was going on around us. The curse, you know like torrential downpour and hail, equipment floating off into the desert, F-14s dropping test bombs between the set and the caravans. It was shocking what was going on. Jean Rochefort getting ill and not being able to get on horseback and not being able to finish the film. It was an endless parade of like, 'What?' It was a shame."
See Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow in the swashbuckling action adventure Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, opening everywhere on Wednesday.
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