Johnny Depp: Career Curve
Johnny Depp's career has pretty much gone up and up.
nWe may think of Johnny Depp as an accomplished and versatile film star now, but do you remember that he got his start in a horror movie? Depp made his feature film debut as Glen Lantz, a student at Springwood High, who is murdered in the comfort of his own bed by legendary dream demon Freddy Kruger. No one at the time would've guessed that he would become an A-list uber star.
nDepp stars on the hit TV show about a team of young cops who infiltrate high schools. He was immediately identified as the show's breakout star and within three years he was leaving the show for the world of film.
nHis first post-Jump Street role, in 1990, found him cast by John Waters as a singing '50s greaser with a pair of over active tear ducts, who is wrongly imprisoned. It was a savvy move that made clear he wasn't (at this point, anyway) interested in being a brainless teen idol.
nLater that same year saw the release of Depp's first collaboration with director Tim Burton, playing the title role in this modern fairy tale about a young man with deadly hands in love with a young woman, played by Depp's real-life fiancee, Winona Ryder. The film was a massive hit.
nDespite having established himself as a box-office stud, Depp continued to lean toward small-budget and arty fare—some of it just bizarre, like Emir Kustirica's film about a man who travels to the desert with his brother (played by Vincent Gallo) to attend the wedding of his uncle (Jerry Lewis) to a much younger woman (Paulina Porzikova).
nIn 1998, Depp portrayed the great Hunter S. Thompson in Terry Gilliam's fever-dream adaptation of the author's story of traveling to Sin City to cover a motorcycle race and getting horribly derailed by his appetite for drugs and alcohol. The film sparked a friendship between Depp and Thompson that lasted to the end of the latter's life.
nBut the Depp we all fell in love with began to disappear into a cesspool of "Pirates" and Tim Burton-ifications of beloved classics with this remake of a perfectly good film, which marked the beginning of a string of films so laughably formulaic it's enough to make a movie buff cry.
nMany see a glimmer of hope for Depp's career with this film that has him again playing Hunter S. Thompson, in an adaptation of an early work that long went unpublished. In it Depp plays a man trying to stop a scheming real estate developer's plans, and steal his girlfriend. The film Opens Oct. 28.
