6/10/2019 Johnny Depp -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia

Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp, in full John Christopher Depp II,
(born June 9, 1963, Owensboro, Kentucky, U.S.), TABLE OF CONTENTS
American actor and musician who was known for
Introduction
his eclectic and unconventional lm choices. He
achieved perhaps his greatest success as Capt. Early life and career
Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean 21 Jump Street, Tim Burton films, and
series. Hunter S. Thompson
Pirates of the Caribbean and Academy
Early life and Award nominations
career John Dillinger, the Mad Hatter, and Tonto

At age 16 Depp Later films

dropped out of Music and personal life

Johnny Depp, 2011.
© cinemafestival/Shutterstock.com
high school to
pursue a music
career. His band, the Kids, relocated from Florida, where he
spent the majority of his childhood, to Los Angeles. In 1983
Depp married Lori Anne Allison, who worked as a makeup
artist while he struggled as a musician. Allison had her friend
the actor Nicolas Cage arrange for Depp to audition with
director Wes Craven, and Depp made his lm debut as a
teenager eaten by his own bed in A Nightmare on Elm Street
(1984). He divorced Allison the following year.
21 Jump Street, Tim Burton lms, and
Hunter S. Thompson

Depp’s professional break came in 1987 with the

premiere of 21 Jump Street, a television police series that
starred Depp as Of cer Tom Hanson, a young cop who
frequently went undercover in high schools and colleges
to catch troubled youths. The show was a hit, though
Depp resented his promotion as a teen heartthrob. In
1990 he left the series and appeared in John Waters’s
Cry-Baby and Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands, two
lms by maverick directors that showcased Depp’s
range. Scissorhands began a long association between

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Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder in Edward
Scissorhands (1990), directed by Tim
Burton.
KPA/Heritage-Images/Imagestate
Johnny Depp in Ed Wood (1994), directed
by Tim Burton.
KPA/Heritage-Images/Imagestate
Sleepy Hollow
Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci in Sleepy
Hollow (1999), directed by Tim Burton.
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Johnny Depp -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
the actor and director that led to Depp’s appearance in
several other Burton lms, including Ed Wood (1994),
Sleepy Hollow (1999), and Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory (2005); in the latter lm Depp played the
reclusive candy baron Willy Wonka. In addition, Depp
provided the voice of the unfortunate groom in Burton’s
macabre animated tale Corpse Bride (2005).
Depp continued to show his versatility with roles as a
19th-century accountant in Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man
(1995) and as an FBI agent who in ltrates the Ma a in
Donnie Brasco (1997). In 1998 Depp, a longtime friend
and fan of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, starred
in Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a lm
based on Thompson’s pseudo-autobiographical novel of
the same name; Depp later received top billing in
another Thompson adaptation, The Rum Diary (2011). He
interviewed gonzo artist Ralph Steadman, who
illustrated much of Thompson’s work, in the
documentary For No Good Reason (2012). Other notable
lms include Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate (1999)
and Ted Demme’s Blow (2001).
Pirates of the Caribbean and Academy
Award nominations
In 2003 Depp appeared as Capt. Jack Sparrow in Pirates
of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). His
performance, which was modeled on Keith Richards of
the Rolling Stones, earned Depp his rst Academy Award
nomination. He was nominated again the following year
for his portrayal of Peter Pan creator James M. Barrie in
Finding Neverland (2004). Depp reprised the role of
Sparrow in later installments of the Pirates of the
Caribbean series: Dead Man’s Chest (2006), At World’s
End (2007), On Stranger Tides (2011), and Dead Men Tell
No Tales (2017), which were among the highest-grossing
lms ever. During this time Depp reteamed with Burton
for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
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KPA/Heritage-Images/Imagestate
(Left to right) Orlando Bloom, Johnny Depp,
and producer Jerry Bruckheimer at the
premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean: The
Curse of the Black Pearl, 2003.
© Walt Disney Pictures/Jerry Bruckheimer
Films/PRNewsFoto/AP Images
Johnny Depp (right) with Geoffrey Rush and
Keira Knightley in Pirates of the Caribbean:
At World's End (2007).
Market Wire/AP Images
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Johnny Depp -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
(2007), a lm adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s musical;
as the serial killer Sweeney, Depp earned praise for both
his acting and his singing, and he received another
Oscar nomination.
John Dillinger, the Mad Hatter, and
Tonto
In Public Enemies (2009) Depp played John Dillinger, a
criminal who became legendary for robbing a string of
American banks during the Great Depression. Depp later
joined Colin Farrell and Jude Law in contributing an
alternate portrayal of Heath Ledger’s character to The
Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009), a conceit
engineered to salvage Ledger’s incomplete nal
performance and made plausible by the fantasy premise
of the lm.
In 2010 Depp portrayed the Mad Hatter in Alice in
Wonderland, Burton’s adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s
classic novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865).
Later that year he starred opposite Angelina Jolie in the
thriller The Tourist. In the animated western Rango (2011),
Depp provided the voice of the title character, a
chameleon who becomes the sheriff of a colourful desert
town. He then played an 18th-century vampire
awakening in the 1970s in Dark Shadows (2012), Burton’s
comedic adaptation of the cult-favourite soap opera of
the same name. In The Lone Ranger (2013), Depp
sported a headdress and war paint as the titular
lawman’s laconic Native American sidekick, Tonto.
Later lms
In 2014 Depp assumed the roles of an arti cial-
intelligence researcher in the thriller Transcendence, a
detective in the horror lm Tusk, and a wolf in the
cinematic adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s musical
fairy tale Into the Woods. In 2015 Depp evinced a talent
for the farcical as the title character in the comic spy
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caper Mortdecai before exuding menace as gangster

Whitey Bulger in Black Mass. He reprised his cheerfully
loony take on the Mad Hatter in Alice Through the
Looking Glass (2016) and later was part of an all-star cast
in Murder on the Orient Express (2017), based on Agatha
Christie’s 1933 novel. In 2018 Depp lent his voice to the
title character in the animated feature Sherlock Gnomes.
Later that year he assumed the role of the eponymous
dark wizard in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of
Grindelwald (2018), the second installation of a movie
series based on J.K. Rowling’s world of Harry Potter.

Music and personal life

Maintaining his early interest in music, Depp played

Johnny Depp in Public Enemies (2009), acoustic guitar in the lm Chocolat (2000) and on the
directed by Michael Mann.
soundtrack to Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003). His
PRNewsFoto/Film Independent/AP Images
work as a guitarist also appeared on albums by the
Pogues and Oasis. While working on The Ninth Gate, he
met French actress and singer Vanessa Paradis, with whom he had a long-term relationship
(1998–2012) and two children. He then married the actress Amber Heard in 2015; they
divorced the following year.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated
by Alicja Zelazko, Assistant Editor.

CITATION INFORMATION
ARTICLE TITLE: Johnny Depp
WEBSITE NAME: Encyclopaedia Britannica
PUBLISHER: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
DATE PUBLISHED: 05 June 2019
URL: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johnny-Depp
ACCESS DATE: June 10, 2019

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