How Johnny Depp became a pirate

The man who once played the gentle, repressed Gilbert Grape has become totally consumed by Captain Jack Sparrow — on and off the screen

Johnny Depp in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2017.
(Image credit: Granamour Weems Collection/Alamy Stock Photo, Allstar Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo, REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni)

After a rocky few years, Johnny Depp is back in the public eye, promoting the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie and dodging claims that he's behaved badly. He's regaling his interviewers with thoughtful gifts, kissing Jimmy Kimmel, and talking about the sick children he visits dressed up as Captain Jack Sparrow. This last is something he's done for years — sometimes even getting choked up when he talks about it, thinking about his daughter Lily-Rose's illness. But there's an anxious quality to his promotional work this year, an eagerness that seems new for Depp, who has always tended to approach fame at a slant.

You may or may not recall that Depp once got arrested for threatening a gaggle of paparazzi while wielding a plank of wood. Before that, he had to pay almost $10,000 for ruining a hotel room. Those were good stories of bad boyhood — so good he told the first one to David Letterman twice — but things have changed. His former wife Amber Heard's allegations of abuse, which culminated in divorce, suggested there was another side to the actor.

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Lili Loofbourow

Lili Loofbourow is the culture critic at TheWeek.com. She's also a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books and an editor for Beyond Criticism, a Bloomsbury Academic series dedicated to formally experimental criticism. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues including The Guardian, Salon, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Slate.