Johnny Depp has played Cannes many times, with four of his films in Competition: “Dead Man” and “Ed Wood” (both 1995), “The Brave,” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” (1998), but he’s never had this much at stake on the Croisette. As the randy King Louis XV, powdered and wigged in the opening-night Out of Competition selection “Jeanne du Barry,” Depp will begin his latest effort at career rehab.
Depp, who will be 60 in a few weeks, is well past his movie-star prime and remains in recovery from a string of court cases. Depp lost his “wife-beater” U.K. libel case against ex-wife Amber Heard in 2020, but last June he won $10 million in compensatory damages in a U.S. court. Warner Bros. paid his $16 million fee for the third “Fantastic Beasts” film, but asked him to resign from playing the role of Grindelwald in the Harry Potter franchise. (Mads Mikkelsen replaced him.) While Depp’s Keith Richards-inspired Jack Sparrow fueled five “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies that grossed $4.5 billion worldwide, Disney has yet to greenlight a sixth; the studio had lined up Margot Robbie to star, without Depp.
“Jeanne du Barry” opens in France after its festival debut; while some feminists have mounted protests, Europeans seem less concerned with Depp’s lapses. “If there’s one person who didn’t take interest in this trial, it’s me,” Cannes director Thierry Frémaux said at the Cannes Monday press conference. “I don’t know what it’s about. I’m interested in Johnny Depp as an actor. Everyone knew Johnny Depp was going to be in a film in France. He’s quite extraordinary in the film. Ask Maïwenn why she cast him.”
Clearly, Maïwenn cast Depp in a supporting character role. But the pony-tailed star turned up on time for the Cannes red carpet, signed autographs for excited fans, spoke French to interviewers, and posed for an eager phalanx of photographers. Reviews so far are solid if unexceptional. (Our critic described it as “perfectly serviceable,” with Depp as a minor note who “affords the French production an additional bit of luster.”) It’s unlikely to find theatrical distribution in North America.
Depp will have to accept a sizable pay cut, though. “He is a great actor so I think he is hirable,” said one studio producer. “The question is what price. My gut says 2-4 [million]. And I am sure the streamers would let him co-lead a series.”
“JD is a good enough actor to resuscitate a career,” wrote screenwriter Larry Gross. “But due to age it will be as a credible character actor rather than as a leading man — he could be the kind of compelling eccentric presence that a Christopher Walken or an Ian McKellen or a Jason Robards have been in their later years.”
Script consultant Nancy Nigrosh suggests that if Depp finds “a small but crucial role in something classy (classy = not based on a comic book or low-rent genre) that is perfectly tailored to his grown-up bad-boy persona, he could be seen as someone who can truly carry his own baggage.”
Or, he could wind up like Joan Crawford at the end of her career, said Submarine co-founder Josh Braun on the phone. “She starred in ‘Trog,’ it was her last movie, one of the worst movies ever made,” he said. “No one else would hire her. She was a B-movie queen.”
What’s perhaps most extraordinary here is after all the court trials, accusations of abuse, production-cost overruns, Depp’s fate remains in his own hands. He can make art films in European exile a la Woody Allen and Roman Polanski, or land a lucrative Hollywood streaming deal, or a string of juicy character roles for name directors. If that doesn’t happen — well, he’ll have no one to blame but himself.
