Time Travelling Actors: Johnny Depp
Note: this is a new series of History Switch articles profiling actors and their roles in historical film.
Johnny Depp was born June 9, 1963 in Owensboro, Kentucky. He began his film career in 1984 in Wes Craven’s horror movie, A Nightmare on Elm Street, followed by a minor role in Oliver Stone’s Platoon. From 1987-1991 Depp played a lead role in the Fox television series, 21 Jump Street, which he was grateful to leave as his career began to take off in the early 1990s.
Depp’s skill as an actor has not gone unrecognized — he has been noimated countless times for Best Actor by organizations as diverse as the Academy Awards, BAFTA, Broadcast Film Critics Association, Chicago Film Critics, Golden Globe, Satellite, Saturn, London Film Critics, Screen Actors Guild, British Independent Film Awards, and Irish Film Awards.
Depp has become known for his unusual choices of odd, offbeat, and often downright strange roles and characters such as Axel Blackmar in Arizona Dream, William Blake in Dead Man, Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, and Edward Scissorhands, to name a few. Depp has also provided viewers with an interesting twist on historical events and portrayals of literary and real people.
Enjoy Johnny Depp as he travels through history by viewing his roles in these historical films:
Film Review — Dead Man
This movie, a “western” on the surface, is actually a metaphorical journey into the nature of life, death, transitions, and frontiers. William Blake (Johnny Depp) is an accountant who has spent the last of his funds to travel West for a job which has been given to someone else by the time he arrives in the end-of-the-line town which is his destination. Through a quirky series of events, he winds up on the run for murder, and is befriended by Nobody, a native american, who is able, finally, to send William home. Cast includes: Johnny Depp (William Blake), Gabriel Byrne (Charles Ludlow), Gary Farmer (Nobody), Lance Henriksen (Cole Wilson), Iggy Pop (Salvatore “Sally” Jenko),Robert Mitchum (John Dickinson), John Hurt (John Scholfield), and Crispin Glover (Man on the Train). Directed by Jim Jarmusch. vnpecawy2q
Public Enemies — Johnny Depp brings Dillinger to the screen
Released July 15, Public Enemies tells the story of John Dillinger, the FBI’s Public Enemy Number 1 in 1933. Reviews run hot and cold on this film, but everyone can agree that it is beautifully filmed and brings to life the 1930s and the period of lawlessness and despair that was America’s Great Depression. The film adapts Bryan Burrough’s book Public Enemies: America’s Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34, and is based on the true story of FBI agent Melvin Purvis (played by Christian Bale) and his efforts to reign in outlaws John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), Pretty Boy Floyd, and Baby Face Nelson. Depp’s Dillinger comes across as a likeable guy, with a certain integrity and loyalty to his friends — even though he is a criminal. The film begins soon after Dillinger’s release from prison for a small-time robbery, and continues through an ill-fated year of high-stakes bank robberies, netting his gang over $300,000 in cash. Interspersed with the stalking by the FBI, the escapes by Dillinger and his gang, and the double-crosses by other members of the criminal underworld, is the romance between Dillinger and Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard).
