Johnny Depp perception

London Free Press: Today Section - Johnny Depp perception: Johnny Depp perception

Recent box office success has movie moguls looking at the actor with fresh eyes.
JIM SLOTEK, Special to The Free Press 2005-07-19 01:22:41

NASSAU, BAHAMAS -- Move over George Hamilton. Johnny Depp is dark; mahogany dark, like a light-roast coffee bean in the sun.

"What can I tell you? Three months on a boat," says the actor, who's been filming two consecutive sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean for nine months-plus in this ex-pirate sanctuary turned pina colada paradise.

"I'm not using any sunblock at this point," says Depp, who owns a 14-hectare island not far from Nassau. "You do when you start out because the sun out here will really take a bite out of you if you don't. But I've sort of levelled off. I don't think I'll get any darker than this."

What makes his complexion more dramatic is that he's doing interviews to talk about pal Tim Burton's predictably out-there Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, adapted from Roald Dahl's classic children's book.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory opened strongly, leading the box office on the weekend with a debut of $55.4 million.

In it, Depp plays the weirded-out chocolatier Willy Wonka with a deathly pale face and a silly, scared, geeky, socially maladroit manner, accompanied by odd mannerisms like a hand over the mouth when he giggles.

Depp, Burton and the producers of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory aren't thrilled that some who've seen it feel the characterization evokes Michael Jackson.

"It actually never crossed my mind. Michael Jackson was not an ingredient or inspiration to the character at all," Depp says.

"A few people have mentioned it and it kind of took me by surprise. I can on some level understand it, the look a little bit may evoke that. But you could just as easily think of some reclusive germophobe like Howard Hughes as well. Roald Dahl wrote this character in 1964 and Michael Jackson was a wee lad then."

Burton's response to the Jackson thing is to laugh derisively.

"Here's the deal: Michael Jackson likes children, Willy Wonka can't stand them," the director says. "To me, that's a big difference in the whole persona, y'know?"

What is obvious is the dark-minded Burton and the challenge-minded Depp have again collaborated on a movie about a gifted outsider -- a vibe that goes back to their first film together, Edward Scissorhands.

As those who've read the book or seen 1971's Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory know, the story involves the announcement by the reclusive candymaker that he will allow five children to tour his mysterious and reputedly magical factory. Said invitations are included, lottery-like, in random Wonka Bars shipped around the world.

The hero of the story, Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore, who also played opposite Depp in Finding Neverland), is a poor lad who lives with his entire family in a one-room house and gets his invitation in a bar he buys with money he finds on the street.

Charlie and the other kids -- a uniformly spoiled-rotten lot that includes Veruca Salt, Mike Teavee, Violet Beauregard and the porcine Augustus Gloop -- are led with media fanfare into a foundry that is part Fritz Lang industrial nightmare and part fantasyland (with a touch of 2001: A Space Odyssey).

The setting dovetails with Burton's love of pastel-hued, heightened reality. There are marshmallow plants, cream-filled buttercups (edible according to Highmore), a chocolate river that stank, trained attack squirrels and the Oompa Loompas, all played by the small-sized actor Deep Roy and then digitally multiplied.

And there's Wonka himself, whose ulterior motive for inviting children into his world seems sinister on the surface, especially when they start falling prey to their own gluttony.

"It's good fun playing characters like Wonka, Capt. Jack (from Pirates of the Caribbean), Raoul Duke from Fear and Loathing (in Las Vegas) -- characters that can do things I would never dream of doing or speak to people in a way that I would never bring myself to," Depp says.

"The material was seductive, but the fact that Tim was doing it was the catalyst. He went out on a limb for me in 1990 with Edward Scissorhands. And that's something I will never forget.

"And over the years (in collaborations like Sleepy Hollow and Ed Wood), he's had to butt heads with studios to get me because I wasn't very popular with studios. So there's a bond and a love and respect that will be there forever.

"And he also happens to be one of the most interesting filmmakers of all time, in my opinion."

Of course, things have changed since the box office success of Pirates. Depp is now a top-ranked draw and is being paid a reported $37 million for the two Pirates sequels.

Says Burton: "This was the first time I didn't have to talk anybody into it."

Both take pains to praise Gene Wilder for his performance of Wonka in the 1971 movie, although Burton makes it clear he doesn't think much of the original film.

Dahl hated it. But according to producer Richard Zanuck, Dahl's widow has seen Burton's version and "is thrilled by it."

Both Burton and Depp tell almost identical stories about how the Wonka characterization came about -- inspired by, according to Depp, "guys like Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Greenjeans and local guys like Uncle Al, and how odd it was the way they spoke, this bizarre musical rhythm and cadence to their speech pattern."

Depp had a ready-made test market for his characterization in his home in France, where he lives with model-actor Vanessa Paradis and their children, Lily-Rose and Jack.

"I tested it on Lily-Rose to see if I was going in the right direction with the sound of this voice," he says. "We were playing and I started to use the Wonka voice and she kind of lit up a little bit, like, 'Where's that coming from?' And I thought, 'All right, I think I'm on the right track here.' "

Being in Cruise/Hanks territory is an odd place for Depp, an actor without a persona.

"He's like a character actor in a leading man's body," Burton says. "He's more like Lon Chaney than a leading man. He likes to transform, play different characters in different movies. He's an actor that you'd think about perhaps even for female roles."

Depp is self-effacing about his looks. Asked about his appeal at 43 to young women, he says, "Gosh, I don't know. I think it's that they see some of my movies and feel sorry for me."

Dressed down in jeans and a worn white cotton shirt, he says, "I remember when I was really, really young, three or four, and my mom and dad dressed me up as a hobo for Halloween. And the only difference between what I looked like then and now is that they drew a little more beard than I'm able to grow."

He's not overly serious about how he got where he is ("That's what the ride is for the moment, it'll always change"), but he seems serious about what to do with it.

"I've been doing things that I've chosen to do for quite a good stretch now. And that small core group of people -- and I hate to use the word fans -- that small core who've stuck with me all these years, y'know, I feel good for them. Because great masses of people decided to watch Pirates of the Caribbean, they don't have to hang their heads in shame. At least not so much."