chipmac

It's funny that whenever people list their favorite Depp films that one of my favorites rarely gets a mention. What about Benny and Joon? Why doesn't his performance in that film warrant recognition?

Daytrip

that along with What's Eating Gilbert Grape are the two that got me into Depp movies

BlackBeauty92

he was funny in "If Looks Could Kill"
dunno if anybody remember that... 007 wanna-be Grieco

"Mobster" also funny because of him... the coolest Bugsy ever

Amel

Johnny is the man. One of only 3 actors/actresses who I'll see anything they're in. But Johnny's top of the list for me. You've gotten some great recommendations from people, I can't argue with any of them.

I'd suggest watching the movies in which Johnny's character's name is also in the title first, ie:
Donnie Brasco, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, What's Eating Gilbert Grape
all brilliant performances in great films. I'd throw in Don Juan Demarco also, a movie I love, but others seem not to. But I do see some other mentions for it, which is nice to see.

AOD

All great performances. Gilbert Grape is tops. Can't wait for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They made the perfect casting decision with Depp as Wonka. I'm sure all the Gen-Xers are foaming at the mouth for a remake of Wonka. I know I am. ..................Cuz I've got a golden ticket!..............

PJsig08

Very few movies had an effect on me like Willy Wonka.....unless this movie is totally screwed up, I may have to change my pants when I go see this movie Can't wait (oh, and the book was my favorite too).

Sparrow

I saw this during its live run on Fox. Aah, the days before responsibility of mortgage.

I've been a fan of Depp's work since the days of 21 Jump Street and have loved all of his work, I even saw Nick of Time & Once upon a Time in Mexico at the theatr(regretted the trip to the theatre, both times).

I recently watched Ed Wood on cable and it's amazing with what he does with each character.

Only Daniel Day Lewis is more impressive. OK, there's Penn as well. All very good actors.

mookiemeister

I like many of his movies... some of my favorites are:
Edward Scissorhands
Sleepy Hallow
Pirates of the Caribbean
What's Eating Gilbert Grape

DVD Smurf

Johnny Depp is very talented and I think he is often underestimated as an actor. By the way I think he is awesome in Dead Man.

Cheers

DVD Smurf

nemein

For the most part I agree, he's probably one of my fav American actors, there are a couple of movies I didn't care for (Astronauts Wife and From Hell) and a couple I really don't care to see (Blow and Fear and Loathing) but pretty much everything else he's been in I've really enjoyed. Looking forward to seeing this next one, Secret Window, too.

Big Quasimodo

Reading through this thread for a reference of his resume, I think my favorites are Donnie Brasco, Chocolat, Gilbert Grape and Edward Scissorhands.

There are many of his films that I did not enjoy, however, although I can respect his work in most of them.

mljones99

he's been my favorite actor for many years now.

joeydaninja

from Time.com

Doing It Depp's Way
By taking on weird roles for even weirder reasons, he has become Hollywood's most unusual star
By JOSH TYRANGIEL

Tuesday, Mar. 09, 2004
Hollywood agents don't get pity. They get 10%. But spare a kind thought for Johnny Depp's agent, Tracy Jacobs. For more than a decade, her client — one of the world's best actors and best-looking human beings — has consistently turned down glamorous leading-man roles in large, profitable movies so that he could play a chorus of memorable (to those who saw them) character parts, like Cesar, the Gypsy horseman in The Man Who Cried, or Bon Bon, the Cuban transvestite prostitute who smuggles prison contraband in his rectum in Before Night Falls. Only Crispin Glover's representatives have suffered more for their percentage.

"Tracy's taken a lot of heat over the years," says Depp. "She has bosses and higher-ups, and every time I take on another strange project, they're going, 'Jesus Christ! When does he do a movie where he kisses the girl? When does he get to pull a gun out and shoot somebody? When does he get to be a f______ man for a change? When is he finally going to do a blockbuster?'"

In 2003 Depp did his blockbuster, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and earned Disney $305 million. His Captain Jack Sparrow didn't kiss or shoot anybody, and he kind of sashayed through most of the film, but Pirates proved that with the right material, Depp can be a huge multiplex draw. His long-suffering agent didn't want him to take the part. "He was pitched the movie without a script," recalls Jacobs. "They basically said, 'We're going to make a movie out of this theme-park ride. Want to do it?' And he said, 'Great! I'm in. I believe in the idea.' I just thought, What idea, you lunatic?"

Now that he has blockbuster status and a surprise Screen Actors Guild award, prestige scripts are piling up on Depp's doorstep. He reads them--"You kind of owe it to the writer, I think," he says — but he has no plans to try to fashion them into any kind of sensible mainstream career. Why start now? "Nothing changes," says Depp, who is in Wales shooting The Libertine, in which he plays the Earl of Rochester, a 17th century poet and pornographer who reportedly died of syphilis. "The challenge for me is still to do something that hasn't been beaten into the moviegoing consciousness. Otherwise what am I in it for?

The dough? Well, the dough is cool, but I don't want to be 85 years old and have my grandkids go, 'Ewwww. Grandpa did some dumb s___.' I'd rather have them say, 'Wow, man, you're nuts!'"

As proof of his willingness to be thought insane, Depp's first post-Pirates movie is Secret Window, in theaters this Friday. He plays Mort Rainey, a successful writer being stalked by a psychotic dairy farmer. Before the movie ends, for reasons too crucial to the plot to fully explain, Mort manically consumes the equivalent of Iowa's annual corn harvest. But that's not the crazy part. "Much of the first half of the movie is just Mort in a cabin by himself not doing things," says Secret Window's writer-director, David Koepp, a man you would expect to have a vested interest in making the movie sound a bit more dynamic.

Depp claims he was riveted by Koepp's adaptation of Stephen King's novella — and the movie does pick up to become a Misery — meets — The Shining kind of thriller. But it was the character's inactivity that really hooked him. "It's always great to get in the ring with actors you respect," Depp says. "But when you're in there by yourself, it's quite challenging. You're not reacting, which is mostly what acting is. Instead, you just have to be. There are scenes where it's like two minutes of just scratching the tablecloth. That interests me." He took the movie to scratch a tablecloth? "I'm not really sure why he wanted to do it," says Koepp. "I'm grateful, but it's hard to be certain of what motivates Johnny. It's possible he just wanted to play a character named Mort."

The whimsy that drives Depp's career springs from his early days as an actor. It is easy to forget that he was the Ashton Kutcher of his era, the hot young star of a mediocre show on Fox. "I wouldn't say [21 Jump Street] was misery because it was a privileged opportunity. But it was very, uh ... uncomfortable," says Depp. So desperate was he to get out of playing Officer Tom Hanson, a dreamy high school narc, that Depp says he made like M*A*S*H's Corporal Klinger, dressing up in odd clothes and speaking in tongues on the set in hopes of getting out of his contract. The producers didn't bite. "It was a weird thing not to be in control of your own image," he says. "I remember saying to myself, Man, when I'm free of this, I'm going to do only the things that I want to do. I'm going to go down whatever road I decide."

In addition to choosing scripts based on his own internal logic, Depp decided that once he got jobs, he wouldn't worry too much about keeping them. "All the amazing people that I've worked with — Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman," he says, "have told me consistently: Don't compromise. Do your work, and if what you're giving is not what they want, you have to be prepared to walk away." Or get canned. Depp came perilously close to being fired from Pirates of the Caribbean when his melding of Keith Richards and Pepe Le Pew freaked out a few senior Disney executives. "It has actually happened a number of times," Depp says. "At the end of the first take on the first day they say 'Cut,' and then ... silence. I mean silence that's deafening. And you're constantly waiting for the knock on the door--'Uh, Johnny? It's not gonna work, man.' But what are you going to do? It's only a movie."

This nonchalance is no act. Depp enjoys being in movies, and he says he enjoyed attending the Oscars, but he saw none of his fellow nominees' performances and guesses the last movie he saw was Pirates — and only because he had to. "I like not knowing what's happening out there — who's doing what, how they were, what the box office was," he says. "Even when I'm in the soup bowl of Hollywood, I just play Barbies and hang out with the kiddies."

Depp; his longtime girlfriend, French actress Vanessa Paradis; and their children Lily-Rose, 4, and Jack, 1, spend about half their time in Los Angeles and half in the south of France. Depp still owns the L.A. club the Viper Room, but at 40, he's no longer a regular. "I swing by every now and again. But being a dad, waking up at 5:30 in the morning to make the bottle for the baby, you start thinking about being in a nightclub until 2 in the morning, and you go, Nah. I've done it. No point in repeating yourself."

In violation of the no-repeat principle, Depp has signed on for a Pirates of the Caribbean sequel. Otherwise, his choices remain abidingly idiosyncratic. He'll play J.M. Barrie in Neverland, which traces Barrie's inspiration for the Peter Pan story; he has a small part in a French-language film, Ils Se Marierent et Eurent Beaucoup d'Enfants, and in June he teams for the fourth time with director Tim Burton to begin work on a long-discussed remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. "I hope it's going to be quite weird," says Depp. "Weird and wonderful."

necros

Depp is an awesome actor. He's great even in really bad movies. Like Secret Window, a movie that IMO was pretty average but everything Depp did was great, he's really the only thing that kept the movie alive. Well Tutoro was great too, but still.

grrkittymeow

i used to overlook johnny depp just because EVERYONE liked him... but then i saw him in edward scissor hands... and then i saw blow... and some other movies he has been in and it was like wow... he's really awesome with his facial expressions. he, like wynonna ryder, is a very expresive person with his face

Cornelius1047

It's called acting, son.

The only movie Johnny Depp had a major role in that I didn't see in the theater since Edward Scissorhands was Arizona Dream (own it on VHS, doubt we'll ever see the DVD). Hell, I even got to see Dead Man by convincing a friend that it was probably good (ended up being both of our favorite movie of 1996). Being 16 and lacking in a car and/or license, I would've had to commute via two public buses and, well, I was lazy. The theater I went to see it at was pretty notorious for carding for R-rated movies, so it's quite a shock I actually got in. I'm glad I did though.

I even saw Before Night Falls. I think it's safe to say he's been my favorite since 21 Jump Street.

Then again, my DVD collection says it all.

K