4 1GT Thursday July 30 2020 | the times

arts

Johnny Depp — from Hollywood

His hero

is Brando,

who had

a similar

disregard

for the

acting

profession

If the damaging revelations from 16 bruising days in

court don’t ruin the star’s career, a string of flops and

his lazy acting style probably will, says Kevin Maher

I

n the eerily prophetic highlight

of the deeply dopey 2011 movie

The Rum Diary, Johnny Depp

and Amber Heard drive towards

their deaths in a flashy red sports

car. She’s playing a femme fatale,

he’s an earnest journalist and, as

in real life, they have only just

met. The breakneck race is her idea of

automotive erotica — don’t ask — and

within minutes of the drive beginning,

through the gorgeous coastal roads of

Fajardo, in eastern Puerto Rico, the

pair are careering along a jetty,

screaming in terror as they hurtle

towards the end of everything.

In the film Depp slams on the

brakes and skids to a halt inches away

from the edge. Yet in real life the

newly besotted pair sped onwards,

straight off the jetty and into the

splashdown hell of a fantastically short

marriage (barely over a year), a messy

divorce and a libel action (instigated

by Depp) that has put the spotlight on

the kind of lurid, dehumanising and

career-killing detail that no speed-

fuelled Hollywood screenwriter could

have concocted.

The messy 16-day libel trial against

The Sun that finished in London on

Tuesday revealed a Beverly Hillbillies

parody world where drugs are snorted,

whisky bottles fly at faces, hair is

pulled, headbutts are apparently

delivered, rooms are trashed, fingers

are sliced open and messages of doom

are written in blood and, when all else

fails, expensive bedding is covered in

what is arguably human faeces.

Heard has previously claimed

that publicising the details of her

volatile relationship with Depp was

tantamount to professional suicide.

In an article that she wrote for The

Washington Post in December 2018,

she said that even making accusations

against Depp meant that she was

dropped from an unnamed movie and

fired from a global fashion campaign,

and that her fledgling career as a

blockbusting heroine was placed in

doubt. “Questions arose as to whether

I would be able to keep my role of

Mera in the movies Justice League

and Aquaman,” she wrote.

In addition to his London case,

Depp is suing Heard for $50 million

for writing that piece (which he claims

is based on the central premise that

he “perpetuated domestic violence

against her”), and is thus preparing

for a US-based court case that smacks

of sequelitis — Libel II: Because

Australia’s strict quarantine

regulations by smuggling their two

Yorkshire terriers, Pistol and Boo,

into the country on a private jet. It

caused a media furore. There was

a whiff of entitlement about it that

was pounced on by the Australian

agriculture minister, Barnaby Joyce,

who announced to the cameras that

laws couldn’t be broken for anyone,

even if Depp had been voted the

“sexiest man alive”. Joyce added: “It’s

time that Pistol and Boo buggered off

back to the United States.”

Depp soon became involved in a

legal dispute with his management

company in which the excesses of his

opulent lifestyle were revealed. It was

then estimated that Depp had made

$650 million from his blockbuster roles

(including Pirates, Alice in Wonderland

and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find

Them). The management company

claimed that Depp had a $2 million-a-

month “compulsory spending

disorder”, listing purchases that

included 70 guitars, 200 pieces of art

(including Warhols and Basquiats) and

45 luxury vehicles, plus $200,000 a

month on private air travel, $3 million

to shoot the ashes of his friend Hunter

S Thompson from a cannon and

$75 million on 14 homes.

When confronted with another of

the company’s claims, that he spent

roughly $30,000 a month on wine,

Depp replied: “It’s insulting to

say that I spent $30,000 on wine.

Because it was far more.”

this time it’s (even more) personal.

The question of whether Depp will

have a career after the (cocaine) dust

has settled is the issue that looms

largest. Hollywood loves, more than

anything, the cliché of the comeback

and has thus offered resuscitating

paths for scandal-hit stars including

Winona Ryder (drugs and theft), Rob

Lowe (sex tape with a 16-year-old girl)

and Robert Downey Jr (drugs and

eventual prison time). However,

Depp’s case is different. It does not

involve a precipitous fall from grace

as much as a slow and steady tumble

towards infamy that began somewhere

in 2012, when the LA Times ran with

the headline, “Has America Fallen

Out of Love with Johnny Depp?”

Back then it was simply a number-

crunching exercise. His movies had

stopped making big money. The

Tourist had been a flop. Pirates of the

Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (aka

Pirates 4) had performed poorly at

the US box office. The Rum Diary

was also a flop. The article noted that

Depp was “involved in seemingly one

misstep after another”. And that was

before the subsequent mega-flops

Dark Shadows and The Lone Ranger.

The latter forced Walt Disney Studios

to take a whopping $190 million loss.

Off screen there were signs that

the sands of popularity were shifting

too. In April 2015, while Depp was

working in Queensland on the fifth

Pirates movie, his new wife Heard was

charged with attempting to bypass

Above from left:

Johnny Depp outside

the Royal Courts of

Justice; with Amber

Heard in 2016; in

Pirates of the

Caribbean and in

Edward Scissorhands