Throughout his career, Johnny Depp has played a wide variety of iconic characters. While we immediately think of the likes of Hunter S. Thompson/The Duke in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Edward Scissorhands in Tim Burton’s eponymous movie, one simply can’t forget his legendary turn as Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean films.
Appearing on screen for the first time in The Curse of the Black Pearl and cropping up again in the next four efforts in the franchise, Depp delivered one of his most memorable characters in the form of Jack Sparrow, a cowardly yet witty and drunk pirate lord who begins the series longing to regain control of his ship, the Black Pearl.
One might have thought that Sparrow came leaping out of the minds of writer Ted Elliott and Depp himself. However, the truth is that the actor crafted his enigmatic character by bringing together two very different figures from popular culture: one of the most notorious rock guitarists of all time and a Looney Tunes skunk.
During an interview with IGN, Depp once spoke of how The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards had provided the apparatus for Captain Jack Sparrow. Deep had been trying to figure out what the pirates of the 18th century might have wanted the most. Initially, he thought of money, but then realised, “I think it also had much more to do with freedom. To be out there, moving forward.”
With that in mind, Depp found an analogue between the pirates of yore and the rock stars of the mid-20th century, of which Richards was one of the most famous. “When you think of rock and roll stars, the greatest rock and roll star of all time, the coolest rock and roll star of all time, in my opinion, is Keith Richards,” Depp admitted. “Hands down.”
However, Depp wasn’t quite finished constructing his character just there as he moved on to a rather strange little character from Looney Tunes, first introduced in 1945. “What I loved about Pepe Le Pew was this guy who was absolutely convinced that he’s a great ladies’ man,” Depp explained. “And he’s a skunk.”
As Depp notes, Pepe Le Pew is a little French striped skunk who is always on the quest for love and romance, but his skunky smell causes his potential partners to run away from him. “Watching those cartoons, this guy falls in love, deeply falling in love with this cat,” Depp explained. “The cat clearly despises him, but Pepe Le Pew takes it as sort of a, ‘She’s just playing hard to get. She’s shy. Poor thing.’”
What Depp loved the most about Pepe Le Pew was how he blindly believed in his own brilliance despite the things that occurred around him. “This guy sees only what he wants to see,” the actor said. “Pepe Le Pew was the kind of character who always was able to run between the raindrops. He’d just always make it through.”
Indeed, Captain Jack Sparrow is certainly a man who believes in his own greatness despite actually being something of a bumbling fool. Throw into the mix a healthy dose of the rock-and-roll antics of Keith Richards, and it’s easy to see how Depp created his strange and enigmatic composite character, certainly one of the main reasons behind the genius of Pirates of the Caribbean.
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