Not just another pretty face

Johnny Depp was supposed to be another TV idol. But the beautifully underplayed roles -- like the voracious dealer in "Blow" -- are adding up to a career.

By Stephanie Zacharek

Apr 19, 2001 | Johnny Depp, so often described as androgynously beautiful, is really more like a male cat, a creature so sure of himself that his more masculine traits aren't the first things you notice about him. You can see it in the way he underplays every role. Sometimes you look at him and you think he's not doing much at all; then you realize that what he's doing is so economical and so understated that you can't afford to take your eyes off him for an instant. He wastes no line, expression or arc of movement. Like those ancient inky creatures painted on Japanese scrolls with just two or three strokes, he's both the suggestion and the essence of feline masculinity, all implied muscle and Zen intelligence.

It takes that kind of muted confidence to forge a career the way Depp has. In the late '80s, after a few tiny film roles, he emerged seemingly out of nowhere to become a teenage heartthrob on the TV series "21 Jump Street," the kind of taint that some actors, no matter how talented they are, never recover from. Forget the fact that TV actors are so often viewed (wrongly) as movie actors' less significant second-cousins; when you're as good-looking as Depp, it's a given that you're going to be written off as nothing more than a pretty face. It's the most unoriginal charge that critics and audiences can level at an actor, and yet particularly in Depp's case, it was intoned in the press as if it were an unassailable fact determined by a team of brilliant research scientists. No one had much faith that Depp could develop into anything special. While the press busied itself with preconceived notions of the type of actor Depp was and always would be, no one saw that he was ready to pounce.

As it's turned out, Depp has been an amazingly prolific actor (he's appeared in nearly two dozen movies since his two 1990 starring roles, in Tim Burton's "Edward Scissorhands" and in John Waters' "Crybaby"). Even more so than many of his peers, Depp has gone out of his way to work with bright, often idiosyncratic, directors, among them Burton, Roman Polanski, Jim Jarmusch and Terry Gilliam. But more to the point, there's no stock Johnny Depp role. His most recent performance, as a kingpin cocaine runner in Ted Demme's "Blow," is unlike any other he's played: His character wins us over early on, making us a party to his voracious, youthful enjoyment of the glamour and excess that come with his profession. But without turning the performance into a dumb cautionary lesson, Depp also shows us a vision of that character years later, at a time when regret, as if denied entrance to his fun-loving soul, has instead settled around his midriff in a lazy, middle-aged paunch. The prosthetic puffiness is just an effect; Depp carries all his weight in his eyes.

That performance is a world apart from another starring role, Depp's portrayal of Hunter S. Thompson in Terry Gilliam's outlandishly enjoyable 1998 "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Depp seemed an unlikely choice to play Thompson: He's too beautiful, too urbane, too sane. But it's a remarkable characterization, a pure and perfect example of how a stylized performance can cut to the heart of a character without coming off as merely twitchy or gimmicky. Depp plays Thompson as a hipster special-needs child, as entranced by drugs as a kid might be with his first set of finger paints. His hands and arms move strangely, gracefully, exotically, as if they don't belong in any real-life setting, or to any real-life human being -- they're like the multiple golden arms of an ancient Shiva statue brought to life in a Ray Harryhausen movie. Depp's bowlegged waddle seems borrowed half from Chaplin and half from Burgess Meredith's Penguin; his undulating line delivery recalls the old black-and-white Popeye cartoons (you could make out only parts of the sailor man's patter, and the legend is that the parts you couldn't make out were filthy). Depp's Thompson is perfectly magnified through a cartoon filter. When you think about it, it's probably the only way to make a larger-than-life figure like Thompson feel real.

Just who is this Depp creature? The press has found his personal life endlessly fascinating, but he's not the sort of figure to whom Hollywood dirt sticks very well. His girlfriends, most notably Winona Ryder and Kate Moss, have been fairly long-term; he's currently settled down with French pop singer and actress Vanessa Paradis, with whom he has one child and another on the way. Aside from an occasional youthful temper tantrum, and his affiliation with the infamous Viper Room club in Los Angeles, Depp hasn't given the gossips much fodder, which may explain why even people who don't care much for Hollywood blather are usually at least a little bit intrigued by his personal life. He's just so lovely to look at: I enjoy coming across the occasional magazine picture of Depp and Paradis, the two of them willowy and radiant, sufficiently starlike but without a drop of haughtiness or pretension.

It's just a guess, but I'd hazard that Depp works too much, and too hard, to have time to be full of himself. (When I compare his attitude and work ethic to that of another extraordinarily talented young actor, Leonardo DiCaprio, I have to wonder if it's mostly DiCaprio's arrogance that's held him back from giving a truly great performance in years; I desperately hope he comes back.) Depp is one of those actors who tends to work just below the popular radar: In his recent review of "Blow," New Yorker critic David Denby lauded Depp, even as he lamented that he's never quite broken through. But I'd argue that Depp has broken through again and again, so many times that it's hard to pinpoint one definable pinnacle of glory. His subtlety is his strong suit. His star power isn't the same brand that Julia Roberts has; there's no false flashiness to him. He'll never be the flavor of the month, because there's no month big enough to hold him.

For that reason, it's impossible to trace a logical thread from his earliest performances to his most recent, other than the fact that he's chosen his projects carefully, making very few bad movies. You can say he's grown and matured as an actor (no serious actor can age without changing), but from his earliest performances, he showed a depth beyond his years. In "Edward Scissorhands," as a sensitive, fragile Frankenboy with scissors for hands, his stark white makeup and perpetually startled-looking eyes gave him the look of a silent-screen matinee idol; the image was like a gentle, sideways poke at his recently shed reputation as a teenage heartthrob. His Edward was childlike and vulnerable, but also gothically handsome, just a step away from manhood. The role leaves a mournful aura behind it; it's hard to shake memories of Depp's innocently sensuous face counterbalanced with the lethal sharpness of his hands.

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