Transcript from Johnny Depp Explains How He Got Into Acting & Talks Pirate of the Caribbean

"I ended up acting by accident. I was a musician and I moved out to Los Angeles with my band when I was 20 years old. And then there were a couple of things that happened in the back where the band split up and I remember I was filling out job applications with a friend of mine and who happens to be, he was an actor less known then than he is now; Nicolas Cage. 

I was filling out job applications at any video stores, clothing stores, anything just to be able to pay the rent and Nick Cage said:  "you know why don't you meet my agent because I think you're an actor. I think you could be an actor." 

I said look I'll meet anybody. I'll do anything at this point and so he sent me to his agent Eileen Feldman and I met with her. She sent me to read for a casting director named Annette Benson who was casting a film called the Nightmare on Elm street.

And they brought me back to read for the director Wes Craven. And I read for Wes Craven and somehow got the job but I mean I was by no means an actor. I didn't have any desire to be an actor, I was a musician.

But the fact that these people were going to pay me what I found to be a ludicrous sum of money which was,,,  it was kind of the sag minimum. It was twelve hundred and eighty four dollars a week. Which I mean, you know, I'd never seen that kind of dough before in my life.

So I suddenly,, then I did some other couple of dumb movies because I still in my mind I was a musician and this was just a way to pay the rent, pay the bills, live.

Then suddenly I found myself on that road. I had been placed on that road as an actor and then one thing led to another from film to film and then I was cast in a TV series called 21 jump street when I was 22 I believe." - Johnny Depp

3.30

" It was fun to me but I didn't have any great ambition to be an actor. I'm a naturally normally,,, I've always been quite a shy person. I've always been quite introverted and so there was a very strange metamorphosis from being one of four. That is to say one of four in a band where you have this fraternity or this brotherhood. And you're out there fighting the world together to try to get that record deal or whatever you're looking for. And when I got on this series and my life started to change in various ways, that is to say that people started to, you know,.. You go into a restaurant and you'd see people whispering and pointing and all that. I was very uncomfortable with it. I was very uncomfortable with it and I didn't like it just because..

I never wanted to be the lead singer and the guy out front and get all the attention. Suddenly I was on my own and I was having to deal with this newfound sort of notoriety. It was odd, it was very odd.

Yeah it was a very uncomfortable thing. I mean it, I don't think it's anything that one can get used to. I'm still not used to it now, which I'm actually glad that I'm not used to it, because if I were I don't think I'd be the same person that I am." - Johnny Depp

6.00 

"Once I realized that that's the road that I was on and that any attempt at going back to music would not have been... I hated the idea that since the television series had come out and I had been exposed as this character or this actor, I had to realize in my own mind and heart that there was no going back to music. 

Because I didn't want to use whatever amount of success that I had attained from the TV series and that sort of thing. I didn't want to use that to influence, you know, some career in music. I had far too much respect for music than to just to become what they wanted me to become. Which was a teen idol or a teeny, you know, that sort of thing.

I fought that with everything in my being. So once I realized that music was no longer an option then I began to study at various places. In the Loft Studio which is now long gone, in Los Angeles I studied with some other teachers,  Sandra Seacat. I read all the books that you could read.

All that was great but you realize that the only way to learn or the only way to learn how to,,, it's not act necessarily. The only way to learn how to react and behave because it's just behavior and it's reaction was to do it. It's on the job training, it's trial by fire. So I did my best to work up my own approach towards a character and such." - Johnny Depp

//Question: When did he start feeling like an actor? //

9.00 

"I would say that the first film that I had where I really felt; okay i've done the work, I know what i need to do, where i considered myself an actor I suppose was when Oliver Stone cast me in Platoon, in 1986." 

- How did you come to be cast in Pirates of the caribbean?

Well that's many years later but Disney had offered me a film called hidalgo. It was about a man on his horse in the desert and stuff and I read the screenplay and I just didn't think it was for me. But I wanted to have a meeting with them because at that point I had a two-year-old, yeah, two and a half-year-old daughter or three. And for three years I watched nothing but animated films, cartoons from Texas avery to Bugs Bunny to... That was all I watched with my little girl.

And I received the screenplay for Pirates,  I somehow in my mind saw this opportunity. Like a way to mesh characters like black cartoon characters for example Wiley Coyote gets a boulder dropped on his head and he's completely crushed. But they cut to the next scene and he's just got a little bandage on his head.

So I started thinking about the parameters that were available to cartoon characters. And if they were available to cartoon characters and nobody ever asked a question whether you were 5 or 95 you didn't ask a question. "Oh Wile E Coyote, of course he's still alive", so I tried to incorporate these kinds of ideas into the character of Captain Jack Sparrow. 

So that I could try to push those parameters and control the sort of suspension of disbelief, then to be able to control the characters actions, words, movements, and put them in a place where the things that he would do or say were so either ludicrous or mainly something that also something.. The cartoon characters can get away with things we can't. Captain Jack Sparrow can do things that I could never do. He could say things that I could never say. So it was for me a way to stretch the parameters of a character and take a risk in doing that.

But if it panned out. And I felt I was on a pretty good mission if it panned out. I thought that it might be a character who would be accepted by five-year-olds and 45 year olds and 65 year olds and 85 year olds, and in the same way that Bugs Bunny is.

- When did you first receive the script for Pirates of the caribbean?

"The first screenplay I received was 2002 I believe. Yeah 2002."

- And what did you think of that script when you received it?

"I thought that it had all the kind of hallmarks of a Disney film. That is to say a kind of predictable three-act structure. And the character of Captain Jack was more,,, he was more like a swashbuckler type that would kind of swing in shirtless and be the hero.

And I had quite different ideas about the characters so I incorporated my notes into the character and brought that character to life, much to the chagrin of Disney initially."

- Now when you say you made changes to the character how did you do that?

"Just in preparation, the same the very same way that I've ever approached any character.

You look for a back history you base it on. It could be anything like Edward Scissorhands for example was based on a dog that I'd had and newborn babies my sister had, a couple of new babies and I watched them. Because I thought that Edward would see things from a place of innocence and not knowing exactly what things meant or were. And also that look of a pure innocent child when they experienced something for the first time. Those were the two main ingredients that I thought would serve the character.

And with Captain Jack, again the cartoon Pepé Le Pew, it's like making a soup, you know, it's ingredients. It's just ingredients; there's some Pepé Le Pew in there. There's some Keith  Richards in there, there's a bit of,,, 

I figured this is a guy who's been on the sea for the majority of his life. Quite possibly his brains may have been scrambled a bit by the sun and also I thought that he'd been on the sea for so long that he had his sea legs but when he got on land he just didn't have his land legs so he could never quite stand still."

- How did the film ultimately turn out in your view?

"I didn't see it but I believe that the film did well. I mean the film did pretty well apparently and  they wanted to keep going. Making  more and I was fine to do that as it was,, there's great freedom in being able to.. It's not like you become that person but if you know that character to the degree that I did because he was not what the writers wrote. So they really weren't able to write for him. So once you know the character better than the writers that's when you have to be true to the character and add your words at the rewrites.

Yeah I believed in the character wholeheartedly and initially the disney folks were somewhat upset." - Johnny Depp

- Now you mentioned that the film was to your understanding a great success. How did your life change after the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie came out?

“Though I'd been around for many years already and people knew who I was and all that.  After pirates one came out there was,,,it was a completely different way of life.

My family and I were being plunged into,,, that is to say that at our house in Los Angeles, you would have people trying to climb the gates to get into ses Captain Jack Sparrow 

You would have people trying to bust in the gates dressed as captain jack sparrow.

You would have people follow you or follow you and your family, so that was the moment when there was no other way but we had to hire more security guards and I was certainly worried for my kids safety.

That's when instead of just the one guy there became several security people because I wanted to make sure that my kids were safe when they went to school or when they went to disneyland. Or when they went to the mall or whatever.

So yes more security and you know them just getting followed you know by hordes of paparazzi and things like that.

I've had worse jobs certainly i can't complain about it but yeah after a while you realize that

anonymity has left the building a long time ago. The anonymity is gone and that's it. That's an odd thing to deal with when you just,,, I mean you can't just drive down to the diner and get a cup of coffee or something . It's not possible it turns into something else altogether so it's acceptance and there's of course there's a bit of sacrifice involved. I can't complain about the work that I've been given, I can't complain about any of that.

I have no right to, but it does make you have to think very creatively when you've got little kids about how to take them to the park, or the swings or to this or that movie. It becomes a strategic mission and that's what happened after Pirates." - Johnny Depp

Reference:

Law&Crime Network [YouTube Channel], (apr. 2022). Johnny Depp Explains How He Got Into Acting & Talks Pirate of the Caribbean. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6yt8aWPiIE