Falling prey to a news dominated by gossip – his trial with his ex Amber Heard was followed by all the TV channels -, Johnny Depp will soon be Louis XV in “Jeanne du Barry”, by Maïwenn, radical change of course for him, after his eccentricities in the five adventures of “Pirates of the Caribbean”. In the past, he gave his interviews in a hotel room, next to a dilapidated suitcase: “It’s Kerouac’s package”, he said. This fetishism reassured him: he would also have liked to have Jimi Hendrix’s guitar, Hemingway’s boots and Christopher Columbus’ astrolabe. “Frankly, the idea of sitting at home waiting for roles to be offered to me is not my outlook on life. » So he went to meet the characters. He hung out with the writers, chatted with the filmmakers, picked the roles, not the fees.
He takes the maquis of the soul
Johnny Depp has an impeccable filmography: Kusturica, Jarmusch, Gilliam, Polanski, Burton, Kaurismäki… His great-grandmother is said to be a Cherokee Indian, raped by a soldier during the “Trail of Tears”, the great migration imposed by the Whites in the 1830s. From this distant past, he still has a feeling of injustice and an underlying rage: “That’s why I made ‘The Brave “, with Marlon Brando…” But from his entry into Hollywood, almost forty years ago (he is 59), he also has a kind of childish trickery left to him: when he strikes the pose of the brave little guy , it is as believable as a mirage in the Bekaa plain. “We must beware of ready-made images”, he said. It therefore strives to vary, to be diverse, undulating, unexpected.
In short, he takes the maquis of the soul. When he arrived in California, with a guitar on his back to respect the romantic tradition of the hippies, Johnny Depp knew how to perform three chords – do, sol, si – and imitate the Beatles. With a group of amateurs, The Kids, he encountered the fauna of the night. A strange character, bawling and mad, fascinated him: Nicolas Cage, Coppola’s nephew. He gave Johnny Depp advice: “Be an actor. Not hard. » He has become. And realized that there are two difficult things in life: “Know yourself and understand cricket. »
Sunday January 15 at 10:55 p.m. on Arte. Documentary by Régis Brochier (2022). 52 mins. (Available in replay until March 15, 2023 on Arte.tv).
