D
[Speaking
of meeting
Johnny years ago at a fund-raising dinner held at the country home of
British
Prime Minister Tony Blair. Johnny had been invited at the last minute
by a
Warner Bros. executive.] We twisted some arms to get his
security check
done in two days. Actually, I wasn't certain they would let him in. He
had a
slight reputation, you know.
—Liccy
Dahl
widow of Roald Dahl, author of Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory, Newsweek, July 2005
He
invited me into his trailer [on the set of Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory,
several years ago] for a glass of wine. I was astonished to find he had
two
bottles of Cos d'Estournel sitting on his desk—a 1989 and a
1990.
—Liccy
Dahl
decanter.com, January 2006
He's
delightful. He really is one of the nicer people
I know. As an actor, he's incredibly imaginative and that's very
interesting.
If you're playing his straight man, which I am to an extent in the Pirates films, it's fun seeing what kind
of work you can create together because he's such an accomplished and
clever
performer.
—Jack
Davenport
Pirates of the Caribbean and The Libertine
co-star, April 2005
Johnny
was doing this character and they were all
going like, ‘He’s doing this character really
weird.’
The day Hunter showed up,
it was like, ‘Oh my God! Hunter’s doing Johnny
Depp!’
So he did a great job.
—Benicio
Del Toro
co-star, Fear and
Loathing in Las
Vegas, Cannes Press Conference, May 1998
The windows were rolled up, so I
thought it would be cool
and refreshing in there, [inside the red convertible] but he had the
heater on.
He was about to do some scene where he was stoned and here he is Method
acting
in the middle of the desert with the heater on so he'd look all
dehydrated and
crazy. He's always surprising you. And he makes it look really easy and
fun.
—Benicio
Del Toro
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
co-star, Entertainment Weekly, September 2003
If
you
don't mention how shy he is, you'll be missing
the boat on a lot of stuff. The reality is that he's a tiny, little,
sensitive
guy, and more times than not, he's overwhelmed with people coming up to
him.
—Peter
DeLuise
21 Jump Street
co-star, 1998
He
was
the star. There was no doubt in anybody's mind,
and I think he really resented that. On the show they would always
randomly cut
back to his face while he was listening to other people
talk—he
was forced to
react and make faces, and that made him mad. So John [Whitmore, the
director]
came up with this great idea: he'd say “I'll tell you what,
you
don't have to
make faces, I will give you the subtext of the scene. There is poop
somewhere
nearby, and at the beginning of the scene you sense there is poop, and
then you
actually smell the poop, and then you can't seem to get away from the
poop, and
then you need to know where the poop is. Now just work on
that.”
And if you
look at the expression on Johnny's face, he is trying to find the poop.
—Peter
DeLuise
21 Jump Street
co-star, 1998
He
is so
damn good-looking. I think Johnny's cheekbones
are insane! When I called ‘Cut,’ I would hear this
collective sigh going on
behind my back.
—Ted
Demme
director, Blow,
November 2003
You
get probably one chance in a lifetime to work with
an actor as talented as Johnny. He's a film-maker, not just an actor.
—Ted
Demme
director, Blow
When
you hire Johnny Depp as an actor . . . if you're
looking for an actor to stand on the mark and do your lines for you,
you're
asking the wrong guy, because he's such a smart filmmaker. Johnny Depp
is also
a chameleon. He, in my opinion, has never done the same performance
twice. He's
a great actor, but his dedication is something that really, really
impressed me
a lot. Johnny is a very unique actor and no matter what, he never gives
a
dishonest take. From day one, he became George Jung and the nuances he
brought
to the part never ceased to amaze me. His instincts are impeccable, not
just as
an actor but as a person.
—Ted
Demme
Johnny
Depp. I think if you told him he was going to
play a 19-year-old black kid, he could do it. It'd be a challenge, but
he's
talented enough to pull anything off.
—Peter
Dexter, writer
speaking of a possible casting idea for one of his stories, 2003
He's cool. I was just a kid, and I
wanted to hang around with
him and be accepted by him—he played a lot of good-natured
jokes on me. He's a
great actor, and I was really proud to be working alongside him.
—Leonardo
DiCaprio
What's Eating Gilbert Grape co-star,
quoted in Depp, by Christopher Heard
He was extremely like Gilbert. But it
wasn't something
Johnny was trying to do. It naturally came out of him. I never quite
understood
what he was going through, because it wasn't some big emotional drama
that was
happening on the set every day—but subtle things I'd see in
him. There's an
element of Johnny that is extremely nice and extremely cool, but at the
same
time he's hard to figure out. That makes him interesting.
—Leonardo
DiCaprio
What's Eating Gilbert Grape co-star
Johnny
related on a real emotional level to the
character’s pain and humor. We’re creating a new
character and didn’t want an
actor that carried baggage with him. Johnny could do any movie he
wants, yet he
chooses to take risks on emotionally complex parts. The camera likes
his
cheekbones but it also likes what comes through in his eyes.
He’s deep,
complex, intelligent, and sensitive. To me, that suggests he will fare
well.
—Denise
Di Novi
producer, Edwards
Scissorhands, 1990
Donleavy has just seen The
Libertine, Johnny's latest film, in which he plays the dark
and decadent
poet, the Earl of Rochester. ‘He is astonishing,’
he informs me, gravely. ‘My
God! This man can play every single play of Shakespeare's, his acting
perfection is such. Like Gielgud or Olivier, in that class or better.
He is
clearly one of the great performers of all time. Doesn't this man ever
do
anything wrong?’
—J. P.
Donleavy
author, The Ginger Man, speaking to
Victoria Mary Clark, French Vogue, 2005
Mr.
Depp
is fascinating, amusing and highly
intelligent company. We weren't talking very long before we were onto
molecules and oxygen and other complicated scientific matters.
Then, during a production meeting in my hotel
room, he
spotted a wooden board with a piece of paper clipped to it on the bed
and he
ran his fingers along its worn surface. “My God, you use that
do
you?” Yes,
I said, I write all my
pages on it
longhand, the page clipped to the board. It's fascinating, in 35 years
he's the
first person to notice and comment on it. Mr. Depp is something else.
—J.
P. Donleavy
author, The Ginger Man, in an
interview with Ros Drinkwater in the Post, 2006
Mr. Depp is a bright, intelligent and
charming man. I met
him in New York and if anybody plays Dangerfield, he'd be brilliant
doing it. I
don't know why this is, but after meeting him, you felt here's somebody
who, if
he found himself absolutely lost in a mountain range somewhere, and he
had a
knife, he'd find his way out. He just has a quality that
says—my God, that's
pretty suitable for Dangerfield.
—J.
P. Donleavy
author, The Ginger Man, NY Daily
News, May 2007
I
came up with Johnny Depp, right, we
were right there and
there was always respect and I watched him and his choices, which have
been
wonderful. And then I see Johnny Depp do Pirates
[of the Caribbean] and then suddenly
Depp is on a Slurpee cup. And the movies are good. And he's great in
them. And
I think: If Depp is on a Slurpee, I want to be on a Slurpee.
—Robert
Downey, Jr.
LA Times, July 2007
He
is incorruptible . . . he always believes in this pure way about love.
He's got
those kinds of values and it's instinctive with him. This isn't
something he's
worked out in his head. I love that he believes in love.
—Faye
Dunaway
I said, ‘How'd you get the
accent?’ And he said he listened
to [Ricardo] Montalban on Fantasy Island.
—Faye
Dunaway
Don Juan DeMarco co-star, Biography,
Fall 2004
I think that Rosamund [Pike] really
demonstrated that
enormous talent and ability that she has. She was not afraid to put up
in front
of the likes of Johnny Depp, who, however warm and empowering he is
with his
contribution, is still a force that is quite something to be around and
be put
with. For me as a director and for anybody else, he has this incredible
intensity and charisma, which carries or aids this talent that he has.
—Laurence
Dunmore
director, The Libertine, Stanford
Daily, March 2006
Johnny,
to both of us [Laurence Dunmore, John
Malkovich] was the one who could realize the character that is
Rochester. It
was so important for me that the character have the breadth and the
presence
with the audience that he could both shock and confront as well as
charm and
seduce. Johnny has this incredible ability.
—Laurence
Dunmore
director, The Libertine, Los
Angeles
Times, November, 2005
Johnny was always one for being able
to step into the
role and step out of it in a way
that sort of enabled him to finish the filming with the crew sort of
cracked up
with laughter—even if we had just filmed something sad a
couple minutes
earlier. It was full of a lot of emotion in that way, I mean there was
one
particular scene, not necessarily a funny anecdote, where he goes back
home and
he's dying and he has an argument with his wife and it's a very
emotional scene
where he's literally falling apart in front of her and very angry and
very depressed
and she likewise is pleading for him to just be himself and to live and
to stop
destroying himself in that way. At the end of it, Johnny leaned
over—having
given this incredible performance and tapped me on the side. I was
operating
the camera and he just said, ‘Breathe’ because I'd
literally been holding my
breath for the whole take. Another one with him doing the dance in the
playhouse with Samantha Morton, I literally caught fire because I hit
the
chandelier with the camera, and to have Johnny and Samantha pull me out
of the
fire was an interesting experience, shall we say.
—Laurence
Dunmore
director, The Libertine, Stanford
Daily, March 2006
I
would personally pay a lot of money to work with
either of them [Johnny Depp and John Malkovich] again and even give
various
limbs. They both brought an awful lot and I'm sure that we'll all work
again
either separately or together on various projects.
—Laurence
Dunmore
director, The Libertine, Stanford
Daily, March 2006
[Depp is an] intuitive, generous
actor. He researches an
awful lot to find that character and bring it alive, then it comes
through
whenever he wants it to—he can play a compelling and
believable session and at
the end make a silly joke. It sits just below the surface. It's amazing
to
watch.
—Laurence
Dunmore
director, The Libertine, Los
Angeles
Times, November, 2005
Johnny
Depp, who doesn’t act in this scene,
concentrates on directing, forming with his director of photography
Vilko Filac
a solid team. Depp is everywhere, shows special attention to everyone.
You’re
as likely to see him helping the stagehands install a rail as
murmuring, by the
ear of an actor, his last instructions before the take. You
don’t see, here,
any of those little normal hierarchies that often poison sets (seat
reserved
for the director, favored treatment at the canteen, etc.) In his
naturalness,
in his contact with others, in his way of pitching in with the crew,
Depp is
very reminiscent of Jarmusch and Kusturica.
—Christophe
d’Yvoire
on the set of The Brave,
Studio Magazine, 1997
E
So
paranoid is he about stardom that
he's taken the concept
of dressing down to almost ludicrous extremes. When I meet him in a
Beverly
Hills hotel room, he's wearing a scruffy sweater and trousers, as well
as an
absurdly crumpled and stained tan hat. With a roll-up dangling from his
lower
lip, the look is Steptoe and Son chic but he can't disguise those
super-sharp
cheekbones and he still turns heads when he walks through the lobby.
For all
that though, the 38-year-old Depp is good company. He thinks before he
speaks,
has a nice, dry sense of humor [. . .]
—David
Eimer
The Evening Standard, February, 2002
A slow and deliberate
conversationalist with a sly sense of
humor, he crouches forward in his seat and occupies himself by rolling
thin
little cigarettes that go out almost immediately after he lights them.
He
deliberately downplays his looks, so his hair is greasy, he's unshaven
and he's
dressed in jeans and a grey shirt. He's also sporting two gold teeth, a
hangover from playing a gypsy in Sally Potter's The
Man Who Cried, opposite Christina Ricci.
—David
Eimer
Sunday Times Magazine, December, 1999
The
afternoon filming is much better.
[. . .] the Earl of
Rochester [is] about to appear. He is riddled with syphilis, a silver
mask
covers his nose, sores disfigure his face, and he can walk only with
the aid of
two sticks. [. . .] I am impressed by Johnny Depp. In sequence upon
sequence of
admirable acting, never once stumbling over his words, he has made this
unlikely scenario seem plausible. Between each take I can see and hear
him
looking into space, psyching himself up for the following one by
repeating his
next lines over and over. Finally, to cap it all, he makes a complete
circuit
of the Chapter House delivering his speech of several minutes in a
single take—his
tour de force one might say.
—an
Extra on The Libertine
I was an extra in the marketplace scene. I
was standing beside the guy who was beside Helena Bonham Carter and Depp
spoke/sang a few lines to me. But when I saw the film they had framed it so
Helena is at the edge of the frame! You see my nose and my shoulder at one
point, and you see me in a long shot for about a second. Oh well.
Interesting thing was though that Depp
switches on his charisma when he acts. We’d all be standing around and he’s
just a guy but when Burton shouted action Johnny Depp just grew and when he
looked at me there was an intense powerful force in him and I was like a rabbit
in his headlights, then “Cut!” and it was gone again. I’d never seen that
before with an actor.
—an Extra on
Sweeney Todd
from Ted & Terry’s Website
F
[Dead Man is] sort
of a road movie
with a horse. Depp’s part
is demanding. He’s pretty much half dead for most of the
movie. It takes a lot
of patience to be half dead and play down your energy, especially for
someone like Johnny.
—Gary
Farmer
co-star, Dead Man,
1995
He came in with long hair and an
earring and a T-shirt with
cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve. He was not what someone usually
looks like
when they're coming in to look for an agent, which was what was so
great about
him: He just wasn't into it.
—Ilene
Feldman
agent for Nicolas Cage, US Magazine, June 1989
Johnny
is perfect to represent a man who never wants
to grow up because you can see that he has this very accessible child
inside
him from the choices of movie roles he makes. He brought something very
special
to the role [of J. M. Barrie], underplaying it in a way that really
pays homage
to the man we both believe Barrie wanted to be.
—Marc
Forster
director, Finding Neverland
The
closer he got to the kids, the more they trusted
each other, [and] the more he opened up with his playfulness. [. . .]
He played
with them, invited them into his trailer. The last day of shooting was
almost
tragic for the kids because they loved him so much, especially
Freddie—he was
so heartbroken and crying. They became a family.
—Marc
Forster
director, Finding Neverland
Their
approaches are different. Dustin [Hoffman]
definitely comes from a different school than Johnny does. Dustin is
like
a wonderful . . . I don't know too much about cars, but people say when
you have
an engine of like an old Ferrari that it has to run for awhile before
it sounds
perfect—after eight, nine, ten takes, he starts running. He's
warming up and
then like on take fifteen, sixteen, you're getting to the jewel of his
work.
Johnny is like take three, take four, and after take ten he starts
getting
tired. So if you have a scene where they both are in the shot, Johnny's
best
work is between take three and take five, that's when he peaks and
Dustin peaks
between eight and twenty five, somewhere in between there. So it was
hard for
Johnny because it's Dustin Hoffman, we both love him, he's an icon of
ours, so
you just try to keep going and keep his focus going.
—Marc
Forster
director, Finding Neverland,
dallasmusicguide.com,
November 2004
He manages to be so
subtle that you think he's completely
natural. He can go from a dramatic scene into a playful scene, back and
forth,
effortlessly. His performance is so intrinsically fascinating and
complex that
it's hard to see that he's actually acting.
—Mark
Forster
director, Finding Neverland,
Variety,
January 2005
Will this be his year? It seems every Oscar
season I write that “this is Johnny Depp’s year” and it doesn’t happen.
“I’m sorry I’ve disappointed you,” Depp
said good-naturedly Monday. He is a genial, private, soft-spoken soul who is
really not a good Oscar campaigner. But maybe this year the work will speak for
itself, as he sings, in an accent no less, and even does a little dancing.
—Roger
Friedman
FoxNews, December 4, 2007