Interview: Johnny Depp

Evening Gazette

JOHNNY Depp fully appreciates the irony of his latest role.

In PUBLIC ENEMIES, he is cast as American gangster John Dillinger, one of several, highly dangerous, real-life villains from the 1930s who feature in the picture.

Dillinger was pursued by the authorities, as he blazed a trail of illegality - the movie is predominantly about the attempts of FBI agent Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale) to catch him and some of his cohorts.

The irony? The fact that Johnny had his eyes on the role of Dillinger for more years than he cares to remember and tracked it in much the same way as Purvis tracked Dillinger in real life.

Finally laying his hands on the role - which had originally been earmarked for Leonardo DiCaprio - clearly delights him.

“For the wrong reasons, of course, but Dillinger has a place in America’s past and I think his story needs telling,” says Johnny, widely regarded as one of the powerful and bankable stars in modern movie history.

“And, from an actor’s point of view, it’s a gift. The ‘bad boys’ are so often the best parts to play and this is a man I had hungered after playing, for many years.

“I only hope the public like my interpretation of the part.”

The 46-year-old actor is too shrewd a Hollywood operator not to recognise the possible dangers of playing someone like Dillinger, especially when he is a ‘baddie’ with a twist, a wrong ‘un who enjoyed a certain heroic notoriety, not least when he escaped from jail by using a wooden gun to scare the guards and the governor’s car to make good his exit.

So is Johnny glamorising the life and times of a criminal?

“No, I don’t think we are doing that at all. We are telling a story about a man who was a 1930s equivalent of a cowboy, who had a certain intelligence and ingenuity about him, but who - and let’s be clear about this - sat very firmly on the wrong side of the law.

“But I don’t think, just because someone has transgressed the law, that their story shouldn’t be told, especially when it is as eventful a one as Dillinger’s.”

In fact, the exploits of Dillinger - whose long list of illegal transgressions took in everything from murder to tax evasion - and others from the 1930s helped weld together the organisation that we now know as the FBI.

As Johnny explains: “The activities of people such as Dillinger became so widespread, thanks to the proliferation of motor cars and motorways, that there had to be a more widespread response to the crime wave that was breaking out and this is where the worth of the FBI - a national organisation - was first realised.

“So this is a movie about a criminal - and a notorious one at that - but it is also about the establishment of an organisation that has done a lot to maintain law and order in America.”

There has been the merest hint of behind-the-scenes disharmony on the project. A screening of the movie in England was pulled at the very last moment a couple of weeks ago, amid claims that director Michael Mann wasn’t happy with the final cut and wanted to play around with it in the editing suite some more.

True or a bit of Hollywood spin to generate yet more interest in the movie? We may never know…

What we do know is that Johnny Depp felt perfectly comfortable, in the midst of a gangster movie, in a way he famously didn’t when confronted with the task of singing in Sweeney Todd: The Musical.

Although cagey on many subjects, he famously said he would “never make anything like this again” after a none-too-happy trip into the genre marked musical cinema.

But gangster movies? Bring ’em on…

“You can’t help but be caught up in the adrenalin of a film such as Public Enemies,” enthuses France-based Johnny. “I think it would be pretty much impossible not to feel excited by the cat and mouse game that plays out between villain and good guy.

“Which side would I have been on? On the good guys side, of course - but quietly respectful, too, of a person such as Dillinger who tries to outwit and outfox those who would wish to see him incarcerated.

“He was a sharp cookie.”