Since he cracked the big time in Edward Scissorhands, Johnny Depp's collaborations with director Tim Burton have gone from strength to strength. Reunited for Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, the two used their spare time to work on the animated feature Corpse Bride. Depp talks to Michael Dwyer about his cartoon creation
Here's Johnny, and he asks the first question. "Is Lillie's Bordello still there? I just love Dublin." When we first met 11 years ago, and the interview freewheeled into a convivial evening in a bar off Grafton Street, Depp was still shaking off what he called "the display-case syndrome" of playing undercover high-school cop Tom Hanson in the TV series 21 Jump Street, but his first two major movie roles, in Cry-Baby and Edward Scissorhands, were breaking that mould.
"If there's such a thing as divine intervention, it was John Waters coming along with Cry-Baby at that time," he says. When Tom Cruise and Tim Burton could not agree on how Edward Scissorhands should be resolved, Depp stepped into the title role, beginning a series of fruitful and wonderfully strange collaborations with Burton that continued with Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and now Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, which Depp was promoting when we met this month at Toronto International Film Festival.
An enchanting stop-motion animated musical, it's set in Victorian times with Depp providing the voice of Victor Von Dort, the son of nouveau riche fish tycoons (Paul Whitehouse and Tracey Ullman), and Emily Watson as his fiancée, Victoria Everglot, the daughter of snooty aristocrats (Albert Finney and Joanna Lumley). Nervously practising his wedding vows, Victor unwittingly becomes betrothed to the Corpse Bride (Helena Bonham Carter), setting in motion entertaining complications in the here and the hereafter.
"I've always wanted to do an animated movie, especially since having my first child," Depp says. "The last few years I've been watching nothing but animated films with the children, and I've really developed a respect and love for them. More than anything, what drew me to this was Tim. We were commencing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and he told me he was working on this other thing, his Corpse Bride movie, and he asked if I'd take a look at the script.
"I read it and loved it, but it never occurred to me then that we'd be doing it at the same time as we were making Charlie. I was very focused on playing Wonka, so you can imagine my surprise when Tim arrived on the set one day and said: 'Hey, maybe tonight we'll go and record some Corpse Bride.' It was crazy. I had no character. I had no idea what the guy was going to sound like. It all happened so quickly - in about 20 minutes. I had just finished playing Wonka all day when Tim took me over to the first recording session and I grilled him as we walked along. Who is the character? Where's he from? What do you want him to sound like? And the character was born in those few minutes."
Depp imagined that the process would be a breeze, that he would read his lines a few times and go home. "It wasn't like that at all," he says. "You're doing scenes with people you've never met, and they're not even there. You're reading the lines in the very non-organic environment of a recording studio and you have to find the emotion of the character and express it, and there's nothing easy about that."
He proudly declares that the result met with the approval of Lily-Rose and Jack, his two children with French actress Vanessa Paradis. "My daughter's six and my boy's three. She's quite calm, quite princess-like and she sits there and watches a movie, whereas my boy will usually watch for about three-and-a-half seconds and then sprint as fast as he can across a room and break something. But when we watched Corpse Bride together, my boy sat on my lap and didn't move until it was over. He was just riveted. He loved it."
As soon as Depp read the Corpse Bride script, Victor Von Dort began to come to life in his mind. "With any character, it all comes from somewhere inside me, some place of truth within. It's weird. When I read a script I get these images in me and ideas just come to me. Sometimes images of other people come to me, such as Roddy McDowall and Angela Lansbury when I was reading Sleepy Hollow, and Keith Richards for Pirates of the Caribbean. I started thinking of pirates as rock stars of the time - their legends usually arrived months before they did.
"So I guess it's just a case of gathering all these little gems of tidbits from wherever and storing them up to use later. One of the primary responsibilities - and luxuries - of an actor is the art of observation, to be able to watch people and their behaviour. I find that fascinating, because people are really nuts! I really enjoy that, stealing little bits from people and incorporating them into the characters I play."
Depp recalls having "this conversation with good old Marlon" with whom he worked on Don Juan de Marco, The Brave and the ill-fated Irish project Divine Rapture, and he launches into a perfect impersonation of Brando. "He asked me: 'How many movies do you do a year?' I said: 'Sometimes two, sometimes three.' And he said: 'You better watch yourself.' I asked why and he said: 'Because we have only so many faces in our pockets'. All this time later, I realise how right he was. He was very, very wise."
Corpse Bride reaffirms the special chemistry between Depp and Burton, once again bringing out the best in each other. "I just think Tim's a genius, and that's not a word you can throw around very easily," he says. "Tim is so special. He's unique. Our working relationship is, as you can imagine, weird. There is a sort of emotional shorthand there. There's some kind of connection between us that I just can't explain. For me, most of the time all I'm trying to do is make him laugh.
"The process hasn't changed since we started working together. Even on Edward Scissorhands, when we were just feeling one another out and building that all-important foundation of trust, Tim would come in and say where he thought we should go in the next scene, but he would always ask what I thought and I'd add my two cents. That would give him other ideas and it all would mount up into this insanity."
Since completing Corpse Bride, Depp spent over six months filming back-to-back sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean. "It occurred to me a few days ago that I had been Jack Sparrow for the best part of the year. I've never been interested in doing sequels, but there was just something special about playing Captain Jack the first time. When I'm coming to the end of a shoot, I'm conscious of the clock ticking away and that I won't ever be that character again, and sometimes I started feeling a bit depressed about that. But with Jack Sparrow I had this sneaking suspicion I might see him again. And I really wanted to meet up with him and be him again, so when the offer of parts two and three came up, I just had to do it. It's not that he's that special, just that I've gotten to know him a lot. He's a pal. It's a very strange thing for a grown man to have separation anxiety with an imaginary character. It's worrisome, because you know it's not normal and you can't stop yourself."
Having spent most of his career working in offbeat movies that fared better with critics than at the box-office, Depp is getting used to mainstream acceptance, collecting Oscar nominations as best actor for Finding Neverland this year and for Pirates last year, and starring in movies, Pirates and Charlie, that did blockbuster business.
"I never had any allergy to the idea of commercial success," Depp says. "It hasn't changed my life and it hasn't changed - here's an oxymoron for you - my work ethic. I've been very lucky in my life that I have worn many hats. I've done everything from selling ink pins over the telephone to screen-printing T-shirts to working in construction to being a musician for a number of years, and I've had a great deal of luck in this business. So I'm somewhat together enough to know that if the ride is going fun and smoothly and everything is peachy keen this week, that all that could evaporate next week, and I'm once again that weird guy who does art films, which is okay by me."
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride has its Irish premiere at Cork Film Festival on October 16th and goes on release from October 21st
