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Not
“Blockbuster Boy”
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“I’m
not ‘Blockbuster Boy.’ I never wanted to be.
I’m not looking for that,” Johnny
Depp explained to a writer in 1997. While turning down leading roles in
box-office bonanzas like Interview with
the Vampire (Tom Cruise eventually played Lestat), Legends
of the Fall (the romantic lead
went to Brad Pitt), and Speed
(which put Keanu Reeves on the
A-list), Johnny appeared in six major films between 1994 and 1997 . . .
and the
most mainstream of these—1995’s Nick
of
Time, in which Johnny plays a desperate father caught up in a
political
assassination plot—is the least interesting.
Far
more memorable were Johnny’s trio of performances opposite
older actors who
played mentor-figures to his characters. 1994’s Ed
Wood, which reunited Johnny with
director Tim Burton, showcased
the friendship between Johnny, as movie director Ed Wood, and Martin
Landau, as
washed-up actor Bela Lugosi; Landau won an Oscar. Don
Juan DeMarco (1995) gave Johnny the opportunity to work with
Marlon Brando, while the somber Mafia saga Donnie
Brasco (1997), pitted Al Pacino, as an aging mobster, against
Johnny’s
undercover F.B.I. agent.
In
Jim Jarmusch’s cult classic Dead Man
(1995), Johnny plays an innocent young man who comes west for a
much-needed
accounting job and becomes an accidental outlaw; the movie’s
exploration of a
man who only begins to live when he knows he is dying is echoed in The
Brave (1997), directed by Johnny and
co-written by him and his brother D.P. But while Dead
Man’s William Blake is a loner among strangers, The
Brave’s Raphael is driven
by his
love for his family.
Love
and death are also constant preoccupations whenever the writers turn to
Johnny’s personal life: his tempestuous relationship with
Kate Moss; the death
of River Phoenix outside the Viper Room on Halloween night, 1993;
Johnny’s
admitted tendency toward “self-medication.” He is
obviously not the happiest man
in Hollywood. “I have demons,” Johnny confesses to
Vanity Fair. And what does
the most brilliant and adventurous actor of his generation look forward
to
having someday? “Peace of mind.”
--Part-Time
Poet
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