The Oscar-nominated actor talked at length about his career and most recent performance as Whitey Bulger in Black Mass at the AFI Festival in Los Angeles

As one of the most successful actors in the world, Johnny Depp is in a position to please himself.

Depp did just that on Sunday night at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles, home to the Oscars, where he took part in a conversation alongside his Black Mass director Scott Cooper for one of the American Film Institute festival’s onstage discussions.

Shortly after sitting down for the hour-long talk, Depp took out what appeared to be a hand-rolled cigarette, proceeded to light it, and then dragged on it (and several more) for much of the evening.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Black Mass - video review

Some audience members literally gasped, but Depp smiled. “The sprinkler things are way up there,” he said, pointing to the curtains above his head.

Depp was discussing his performance as Irish-American Boston crime lord Whitey Bulger in Cooper’s gangster drama, but also revealed much more during the talk, moderated by Variety’s Jenelle Riley. Below are the key highlights.

Depp doesn’t bother with screen direction in scripts.

The actor said he only reads through an entire script once before taking on a project. But when it comes time to prepare for the role, Depp said he only pays attention to the dialogue on the page and ignores everything else. “I black out all screen direction,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Why should I know what’s supposed to happen? I think it should be much more organic.”

“It’s why he’s a genius,” Cooper said, causing the crowd to go wild with applause.



Depp rarely watches his own movies.

“I hate watching myself on screen,” Depp said. “I can’t stand it.” The actor did, however, admit that he made an exception for Black Mass. “I held on to my chair very tightly,” he said of the experience of sitting through it.

Depp was confident he could play Bulger

“I felt pretty confident that I could pull it off under the right circumstances,” Depp said of the challenge of embodying the convicted murderer. Those circumstances involved a physical transformation, including makeup and prosthetics.

Depp said he deems it his responsibility to make his audiences forget it’s him onscreen within the first “three, five, seven minutes” of any given performance. “That’s really important to me.”



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Watch the Black Mass trailer

Johnny Depp: 'I killed my dogs and ate them' Read more

Depp feels more pressure when playing a real person

Unsurprisingly, Depp said that when playing a real-life figure like Bulger or Donnie Brasco, there’s an added pressure that goes along with it. “It’s a completely different process,” he said of playing those figures, compared with, for instance, Willy Wonka in Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

“It’s very, very important to me, no matter who the person is, to play that person with the utmost degree of truth that I’m able to bring,” he said of playing real people. “But playing a character like Jack Sparrow or Willy Wonka, that requires nothing but a degree of responsibility to the intent of the story – responsibility to the film-maker to deliver the goods. More than anything it just comes down to imagination: what are the ingredients for this character?”



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow. Photograph: Peter Mountain/AP

‘All my characters are gay’

Depp recounted the well-documented story that he was almost fired from the set of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie because his outlandish performance as Jack Sparrow initially had Disney executives worried.

“It trickled back to me somehow that, ‘Goddammit, Johnny Depp’s ruining the film! What is that thing? Is it drunk, is it gay?”

Depp recalled a specific meeting with someone from “the upper echelon of the studio”. “‘What the fuck are you doing?’” he remembered the person asking. “When they asked if it was gay, I said: ‘Didn’t you know all my characters are gay?’”



Black Mass review - compelling true crime drama is mighty comeback for Johnny Depp Read more

Depp hates auditioning

Lucky for Depp, actors of his clout don’t audition for projects – the work comes to them. But Depp recalled that before he became one of the highest-grossing actors in Hollywood, he was “absolutely horrible at auditioning”.

“I was a young idiot,” he said, looking back. “I recognized that this [auditioning] process really had far less to do with performance and far less to do with connecting. So in my mind I always thought, to put it in a very nice way, this is horseshit. It’s an uncomfortable place to be where you feel you must be ‘on’.”

Depp uncomfortably recalled one especially “rank” audition for the Coen brothers “where I embarrassed myself to new heights”. He failed to reveal which project Joel and Ethan Coen had him read for, but said the encounter occurred “years ago”.

“I can only imagine the choices I must have made,” he said of the audition, “but what I do recall very well was how loud the silence was after I finished whatever I had done.”

Depp initially did not want to be in 21 Jump Street

Depp’s major breakout role as Tom Hanson in 21 Jump Street almost didn’t happen, according to the actor. The actor had starred in Nightmare on Elm Street, Platoon and Cry-Baby up to that point, but said he was “broke” before auditioning for the popular show, prompting him to try out. “I didn’t want to do a television series,” he said.

He said his audition for 21 Jump Street was “a last-minute thing”, and that he had “one of the worst flus I’ve ever experienced in my life” at the time.

“I went there, signed some piece of paper, did the screen test – and the next day I was on a plane to Vancouver. I guess that was my best audition.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Photograph: Warner Bros/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

His daughter thinks he’s ‘weird’

Depp said his two children have yet to watch Black Mass, but that he’s not afraid of them seeing it. “They’ve seen far worse,” he said, laughing. When his kids went to go see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which he has yet to watch, Depp said his daughter, Lily-Rose, looked at her father point-blank and said: “You’re really weird.” “It was at that moment that I thought I did all right,” Depp said.