He was a teen heartthrob, then he was an acclaimed character actor, then he was the highest-paid actor on the planet, and now he’s Mortdecai. Johnny Depp has had one hell of a career, as strange and unexpected as the characters he plays.
Whether you love him or see his filmography as a mere succession of men with strange accents and silly hats, you have to admit that Johnny Depp has dedicated his life to creating memorable characters. And to think, he could have coasted on movie star charm (heaven knows he’s good-looking enough). but that would have been the easy way out. He doesn’t always create magic, but there’s always alchemy at work: even some of his failed creations have made their mark, and weaseled their way into pop culture, only to nestle and remain there for many years.
So let’s take a look at what we here at ComingSoon.net consider the 12 most unforgettable Johnny Depp characters. For better or worse, these are the creations that stick with us, and seem likely to cement his place in Hollywood history, whether or not you think some of his more recent movies kind of stunk.
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The 12 Most Unforgettable Johnny Depp Characters
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12. Guy Lapointe
From: Tusk (2014)
"Unforgettable" is not always synonymous with "good." In Kevin Smith's horror comedy Tusk, Johnny Depp co-stars as Guy Lapointe, a Canadian detective with an accent so outrageous that even Monty Python would have told him to tone it down a little bit. Lapointe exists only to be a surprise Johnny Depp cameo, and yet has oodles of screen time, yelling terrible lines of pointless dialogue and doing little to push the story along. We will never forget how much this character hurt us.
Memorable Line: Everything he says is equally traumatic. And hard to understand.
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11. The Mad Hatter
From: Alice in Wonderland (2010)
Tim Burton's pseudo-sequel Alice in Wonderland imagined the illogical fantasy worlds of Lewis Carroll as a fairly standard hero's journey, propped up with one gauche design after another. At least The Mad Hatter was memorably gauche. Johnny Depp did the best he could to breathe life into the film with an interpretation of the classic character as a somewhat heroic but mostly sad creation, whose occupation - and its close proximity to the poisonous metal mercury - has driven him to insanity. He knows that his mind has gone, and sometimes he suspects he's worse off for it. Still he futterwackens vigorously.
Memorable Line: "You used to be much more muchier. You've lost your muchness."
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10. Cry-Baby
From: Cry-Baby (1990)
Johnny Depp was trying to shake his teen heartthrob mantle from the hit series "21 Jump Street" when he agreed to co-star in Cry-Baby, a 1950's throwback musical from lovably iconoclastic director John Waters. So it's a little ironic that his character is the ultimate teen heartthrob: persecuted for being from the wrong side of the tracks (literally), in love with a girl from the right side and crooning hard with his rock 'n' roll band. He's the ultimate corny rebel charmer, so of course he eventually inspired a Tony Award-nominated musical.
Memorable Line: "ELECTRICITY KILLED MY PARENTS!"
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9. 'Donnie Brasco'
From: Donnie Brasco (1997)
Perhaps the best undercover movie ever made, Donnie Brasco stars Johnny Depp as FBI Agent Joseph D. Pistone, who infiltrated the Bonanno crime family in the 1970s as the title character. Depp plays both parts brilliantly, and bonds with an aging mafioso played by Al Pacino in one of the most heartbreaking bromances in movie history. Joseph/Donnie is perfectly genuine, even when he's not, and his detailed dissection of gangster terminology is one of the best scenes that Depp has ever performed.
Memorable Line: "Sometimes it just means, 'Forget about it.'"
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8. Rango
From: Rango (2011)
Who is Rango? Not even Rango knows for sure. The hapless chameleon falls out of his owners' car in the middle of the desert and finds himself in a violent, cynical, spaghetti western landscape where his lies - mostly stolen from movies he saw from inside his see-through habitat - make him seem like a great hero. Now he just has to live up to them. Depp is at his very funniest in Rango, calling attention to the inherent falseness of acting while giving a genuine performance as a person (okay, chameleon) whose entire identity is that doesn't have one.
Memorable Line: "I want a urine sample from everyone and a latte. Don't mix up the two."
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7. Sam
From: Benny & Joon (1993)
Benny & Joon is a strange comedy about eccentricity and mental illness, arguing that there is a thin line between them, but that the difference still matters. As Sam, Johnny Depp sweetly personifies those delightful people who spend more time mastering things like silent comedy slapstick than doing anything so-called "meaningful" with their lives, and as he falls in love for the schizophrenic Joon (Mary Stuart Masterson), he touchingly discovers the real responsibilities of living in the real world. And he does so without sacrificing his strangeness.
Memorable Line: "Did you have to go to school for that?" "No, no, I got thrown out of school for that."
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6. Willy Wonka
From: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
Although he may never replace the great Gene Wilder as the most beloved cinematic Willy Wonka, no one can say that Johnny Depp didn't try to put his own stamp on the classic character. Depp's version isn't a mad genius, he's an isolated man-child whose fantastical chocolate factory is as much an expression of obsessive-compulsive self-entertainment as it is actually capable of making candy. With his too-tight gloves and elf-like high octaves, he evokes Michael Jackson in his Neverland Ranch, a bizarre - though certainly intriguing - interpretation of Roald Dahl's classic creation.
Memorable Line: "Don't touch that squirrel's nuts!"
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5. Edward Scissorhands
From: Edward Scissorhands (1990)
How do porcupines mate? Carefully, of course, and Tim Burton's unique suburban fairy tale reminds us that this juxtaposition of love and pain is never far from our thoughts. Johnny Depp seemingly escaped from a German Expressionist horror film, but despite his razor sharp hands he only seems to want to express love. Burton imagines a world that accepts Edward's otherness as long as it entertains them, and fears him as soon as Edward needs their understanding. Maybe he doesn't belong in a pastel-colored suburb, but it makes your heart ache to imagine that maybe... he doesn't belong anywhere at all.
Memorable Line: "Hold me." "I can't."
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4. Ichabod Crane
From: Sleepy Hollow (1999)
Tim Burton's ode to Hammer Horror movies isn't even a horror movie: it's an action thriller with a desaturated color palette and a subversive streak. Ichabod Crane has been reimagined as a homicide detective instead of a schoolteacher, and rather than make him a conventional "badass," Depp portrays Crane as an effete coward. Watching Ichabod Crane cower behind his underage apprentice in the face of danger is oddly endearing, and genuinely hilarious. And it works, because a hero who staves off paralyzing fear is a lot more interesting than one who stoically saves the day with nary a doubt in their head.
Memorable Line: "You must never move the body!" "Why not?" "Because."
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3. Edward D. Wood, Jr.
From: Ed Wood (1994)
Edward D. Wood, Jr. has been called the worst director in movie history, a concept to which he is wholly oblivious in Tim Burton's biopic. As Wood, Johnny Depp adopts a giddy enthusiasm for making movies without ever demonstrating the ability to make them well, but his personality is so infectious that he attracts a whole gang of losers who can't resist his eager charms. The magic of Ed Wood isn't that he made bad movies, but that to him, every movie - and everyone, even a bitter, over the hill, morphine-addicted Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau) - is worthy of love. By the end of Ed Wood, you'll feel the same way about him.
Memorable Line: "Really? Worst film you ever saw... Well, my next one will be better!"
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2. Raoul Duke
From: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
Johnny Depp studied revolutionary gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson so thoroughly that he practically transformed into the author's famous analogue Raoul Duke in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Terry Gilliam's spot on adaptation of Thompson's indictment, or possibly just drug addled satire of excess and denial and ignorance and even more excess is one of the great cinematic acid trips. And there's no one we'd rather do acid with than Raoul Duke, played with a nearly tragic hairline by Johnny Depp in one of his finest, most unforgettable performances.
Memorable Line: "We can't stop here! This is bat country."
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1. Captain Jack Sparrow
From: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
The character may or may not have outworn his welcome after three mixed-bag sequels and countless cosplayers trying to look swarthy, but none of us will ever forget Jack Sparrow. Once again, Johnny Depp took a role in a potentially conventional action yarn and spun gold from the hay, making Pirates of the Caribbean an unexpected hit by the sheer force of his originality. Easy to impersonate, hard to properly describe, the wobbly and off-putting (yet endlessly capable) Captain earned Depp his first-ever Oscar nomination. Even the Academy had to recognize that he was doing brilliant work, in a genre and with a character from which nobody expected a damn thing.
Memorable Line: "You forgot one very important thing, mate: I'm Captain Jack Sparrow."
