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Johnny Depp, in full John Christopher Depp II, (born June 9, 1963, Owensboro, Kentucky, U.S.), American actor and musician who was known for his eclectic and unconventional film choices. He achieved perhaps his greatest success as Capt. Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean series.

Early life and career

At age 16 Depp dropped out of high school to pursue a music career. His band, the Kids, relocated from Florida, where he spent the majority of his childhood, to Los Angeles. In 1983 Depp married Lori Anne Allison, who worked as a makeup artist while he struggled as a musician. Allison had her friend the actor Nicolas Cage arrange for Depp to audition with director Wes Craven, and Depp made his film debut as a teenager eaten by his own bed in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). He divorced Allison the following year.

Depp’s professional break came in 1987 with the premiere of 21 Jump Street, a television police series that starred Depp as Officer Tom Hanson, a young cop who frequently went undercover in high schools and colleges to catch troubled youths. The show was a hit, though Depp resented his promotion as a teen heartthrob. In 1990 he left the series and appeared in John Waters’s Cry-Baby and Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands, two films by maverick directors that showcased Depp’s range. Scissorhands began a long association between the actor and director that led to Depp’s appearance in several other Burton films, including Ed Wood (1994), Sleepy Hollow (1999), and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005); in the latter film Depp played the reclusive candy baron Willy Wonka. In addition, Depp provided the voice of the unfortunate groom in Burton’s macabre animated tale Corpse Bride (2005).

Depp continued to show his versatility with roles as a 19th-century accountant in Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995) and as an FBI agent who infiltrates the Mafia in Donnie Brasco (1997). In 1998 Depp, a longtime friend and fan of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, starred in Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a film based on Thompson’s pseudo-autobiographical novel of the same name; Depp later received top billing in another Thompson adaptation, The Rum Diary (2011). He interviewed gonzo artist Ralph Steadman, who illustrated much of Thompson’s work, in the documentary For No Good Reason (2012). Other notable films include Roman Polanski’s The Ninth Gate (1999) and Ted Demme’s Blow (2001).

In 2003 Depp appeared as Capt. Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). His performance, which was modeled on Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, earned Depp his first Academy Award nomination. He was nominated again the following year for his portrayal of Peter Pan creator James M. Barrie in Finding Neverland (2004). Depp reprised the role of Sparrow in later installments of the Pirates of the Caribbean series: Dead Man’s Chest (2006), At World’s End (2007), On Stranger Tides (2011), and Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017), which were among the highest-grossing films ever. During this time Depp reteamed with Burton for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), a film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s musical; as the serial killer Sweeney, Depp earned praise for both his acting and his singing, and he received another Oscar nomination.

In Public Enemies (2009) Depp played John Dillinger, a criminal who became legendary for robbing a string of American banks during the Great Depression. Depp later joined Colin Farrell and Jude Law in contributing an alternate portrayal of Heath Ledger’s character to The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009), a conceit engineered to salvage Ledger’s incomplete final performance and made plausible by the fantasy premise of the film.

In 2010 Depp portrayed the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland, Burton’s adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s classic novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Later that year he starred opposite Angelina Jolie in the thriller The Tourist. In the animated western Rango (2011), Depp provided the voice of the title character, a chameleon who becomes the sheriff of a colourful desert town. He then played an 18th-century vampire awakening in the 1970s in Dark Shadows (2012), Burton’s comedic adaptation of the cult-favourite soap opera of the same name. In The Lone Ranger (2013), Depp sported a headdress and war paint as the titular lawman’s laconic Native American sidekick, Tonto.

Later films

In 2014 Depp assumed the roles of an artificial-intelligence researcher in the thriller Transcendence, a detective in the horror film Tusk, and a wolf in the cinematic adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s musical fairy tale Into the Woods. In 2015 Depp evinced a talent for the farcical as the title character in the comic spy caper Mortdecai before exuding menace as gangster Whitey Bulger in Black Mass. He reprised his cheerfully loony take on the Mad Hatter in Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) and later was part of an all-star cast in Murder on the Orient Express (2017), based on Agatha Christie’s 1933 novel. In 2018 Depp lent his voice to the title character in the animated feature Sherlock Gnomes. Later that year he assumed the role of the eponymous dark wizard in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, the second installation of a movie series based on J.K. Rowling’s world of Harry Potter. In Minamata (2020) Depp portrayed photojournalist W. Eugene Smith, who in the early 1970s documented the impact of industrial pollution on the residents of a Japanese village.

Music and personal life

Maintaining his early interest in music, Depp played acoustic guitar in the film Chocolat (2000) and on the soundtrack to Once upon a Time in Mexico (2003). His work as a guitarist also appeared on albums by the Pogues and Oasis. While working on The Ninth Gate, he met French actress and singer Vanessa Paradis, with whom he had a long-term relationship (1998–2012) and two children.

In 2015 Depp wed the actress Amber Heard, and their tumultuous marriage became tabloid fodder. Heard notably accused him of physically assaulting her and alleged that he had substance abuse issues. They divorced in 2016, and two years later Heard wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post claiming that she was a “public figure representing domestic abuse.” Also in 2018 The Sun, a British newspaper, referred to Depp as a “wife beater.” He sued the paper for libel, and the trial ended in 2020 with the judge ruling against Depp, stating, “I accept that Mr. Depp put [Heard] in fear of her life.” During this time Depp also sued Heard, for defamation over her article in the Post. She in turn countersued, alleging that Depp defamed her when one of his lawyers called her abuse claims a hoax. The televised trial began in April 2022, and it became something of a media circus; the trial was especially popular on social media. After six weeks of testimony—which included both sides accusing each other of domestic abuse—a jury ruled for Depp in his lawsuit, finding that Heard had acted with “actual malice.” Depp was awarded $15 million in compensatory and punitive damages, though the judge lowered the amount to $10.35 million. The jury also found that Heard had been defamed by Depp’s attorney, but she did not prevail on two other counts. She was given $2 million in compensatory damages.

Courtesy - The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.
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