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Johnny Depp's Biographical Films Biopics truly show the actor's chameleonic qualities
Playing a person who actually existed is one of an actor’s
greatest challenges: It’s necessary to get the details (including, when
possible, the physical appearance and voice) right, but at the same time, it’s
important to not simply produce a Saturday Night Live-style caricature.
As in the case with his gallery of fictional roles, a truly gifted actor must
make a real-life subject a believable character.
Johnny Depp has played more than his share of real-life
people: the undercover cop in Donnie Brasco, the drug dealer in Blow,
the investigator in From Hell and film director Ed Wood. “I’m the
bio guy,” he says. “I don’t know what that is. That’s weird.” But the above
titles also fit into other categories – and are covered in other features in
this issue – leaving us with three biographical films that don’t quite fit
anywhere else: Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas, Finding
Neverland and The Libertine. Each one is challenging in its own way
– and each has much to offer to the Depp faithful.
Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas
The film hardly shies away from the prodigious alcohol - and
drug-taking by the pair, with various hallucinations vividly brought to life by
director Gilliam (the Monty Python animator, whose other films include Time
Bandits and Brazil). Thompson himself crops up in a cameo during one of
Duke’s hallucinations, with Maguire, Diaz and Ricci popping up in small roles
as bystanders impressed and/or appalled by the pair’s antics.
Del Toro gained more than 40 pounds before filming began,
while Depp lived with Thompson for months, doing research for the role.
Thompson – who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 2005 – was notable for
his rapid-fire, mumbly delivery and his shambling walk, which Depp reproduced very
well … just as Bill Murray had done in an earlier Thompson-based film, 1980’s Where
The Buffalo Roam. Murray, who’d done similar research, called Depp up to
warn him how hard it would be to get Thompson out of his system.
"Hunter is indelible" Depp enthused at the time. "He is
like a disease you’ve got. He slips under your skin, takes root into your blood
and your pores. Hunter impregnates you. He haunts you. His rhythm, the way he
speaks, his language are very interesting. And it’s hard to get rid of it after
mixing with him for a time."
The role required Depp to shave his beard to play the
bald-pated Thompson, but it was a small price to pay to hang out with the
legend - airily hard-living author. "When you make the choice to play a living
human being, there’s a lot of responsibility," he notes, "especially when you
really care about them. I felt a tremendous responsibility doing the film," he
adds. "I had sort of developed this semi-relationship with Hunter at the time.
I really wanted to do a great job for him. I wanted him to be proud."
And how was Johnny’s first day with Hunter? "Wonderful! We
made a bomb in his kitchen. And then, we went in his garden and shot at it with
a shotgun," he laughs. "Just for fun."
"Johnny was amazing," says Gilliam. "He was like some kind
of vampire. Each time he’d come back with more of Hunter’s clothes and things.
He was stealing Hunter’s soul, really, secretly – which Hunter was apparently
quite happy to go along with."
In Rolling Stone’s tribute to Thompson after the
author’s death, Depp wrote: "He was, without question, the most loyal and
present friend I have ever had the honor of knowing." Depp is now preparing to
star in The Rum Diary, based upon a Thompson novel.
Director Forster thought the unconventional pairing of Depp
and Winslet was the key to the film. "Kate has a real earthiness to her, a
strength of willpower," he says, while "Johnny has this very creative spirit,
out there and floating and everything. So the two of them juxtaposed I think
makes an interesting match.
"What happened was, when I wrote the script, I envisioned
Johnny Depp in the part," he continues, "because I felt he would be the right
actor to be able to play the dramatic sequences and the playful sequences. And
that he would be able to go back and forth very smoothly. Usually, actors do
the one or the other, but not both. So I only envisioned him always because he
had the child within alive a lot."
Interestingly, the film was originally scheduled to be
released in fall 2003, but Columbia Pictures, which had the rights to Barrie’s
play for its film Peter Pan, refused to allow Miramax to use certain
scenes from the play in Neverland if it was released at the same time.
Miramax agreed to delay Neverland’s release by one year in exchange for
the rights to use Barrie’s words. "It started to feel like it was shelved or
something, you know what I mean?" Depp recalls.
Of the source material, he adds, "It’s a masterpiece of
imagination, and the results of the most remarkable inspiration. It’s one of
those rare perfect things in the world that will always be with us, and this
was a wonderful opportunity to explore where such a powerful story might have
come from."
The film was a critical and box-office success. The movie
ended up winning Best Film from the National Board Of Review, and landed a
total of seven Oscar and five Golden Globe nominations, underscoring Depp’s
pride in the picture. "It never turns into a sentimental love story of two
people destined to be together or that sort of thing," he explains. "Instead,
it’s a much more complicated and moving relationship between two people who
need each other on a level that’s really beyond explanation or words."
The emotion of the film crossed over to the actor, he adds.
"I remember on the last day of the shoot, being with the boys, and especially
Freddie (Highmore) – my pal Freddie – we were sort of saying, ‘Goodbye, see you
later,’ and not able to look each other in the eye because you just start
welling up. Especially something like this with little kids – emotions are sort
of ricocheting all over the place. So it was really heavy." Not to worry,
though – Depp and Highmore immediately reteamed for 2005’s Charlie And The
Chocolate Factory.
Production Notes: Wilmot was indeed a notorious cad and Poet
in the court of King Charles II of England during the 1600’s. The film charts
his “progress” in seducing young actress Elizabeth Berry (Morton), along the
way helping her to hone her craft, while the King (Malkovich), although caring
deeply for his friend Wilmot, cannot afford to have him ruin his royal
reputation.
"You will not like me," Wilmot says at the film’s beginning,
and unfortunately, most critics and audiences all-too-readily agreed. ("It
winds up doing something I hadn’t thought possible; It renders Johnny Depp
charmless," sniffed Entertainment Weekly.) Some critics, however, argued
that the picture’s strength came from its relentlessness in showing just how
depraved Wilmot’s downward spiral was;
Depp said that the character appealed to him because he was
"a beautiful poet and someone who I think never really got a particularly fair
shake through history." He further admits that he felt a certain connection
with Wilmot: "Doing the research and reading up and learning about John Wilmot
gave me a beautiful opportunity to sort of educate myself. He was a very
complicated man; He was a hypersensitive man who unfortunately self-medicated
to a degree that ended up taking him out."
As far as taking on Wilmot – and his other real-life
characters – Depp admits, "I have done it a few times. It depends, you know, on
the person, on the character, on the historical figure. The weird thing is it
kind of ups the stakes in terms of your responsibility, because you want to do
your best to serve their memory well."
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By Kevin Zimmerman
Finding Neverland
The Libertine
