The only times Johnny Depp dreamed in character

Johnny Depp is known as one of the great character actors. He has created some truly compelling cinematic alter egos, each one incredibly different from the last. What are the similarities between Captain Jack Sparrow and The Mad Hatter, or between Willy Wonka and Edward Scissorhands? Apart from the fact that they’re all a bit weird and played by Depp, not much.

While nobody would go as far as to call Depp a ‘method actor’, he has gone to some pretty extreme lengths to get into character. For his role as Hunter S Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, he lived with the writer to study his habits more closely, spending his nights sleeping in a cramped basement next to kegs of gunpowder. However, when he eventually drifted off, he wasn’t dreaming in Thompson’s voice. He saved that trick for two other characters.

Speaking to Vanity Fair, Depp was asked whether or not he’d ever had an in-character dream. “I’ve certainly had dreams where I was the character,” he replied, “Sweeney was like that. There were a lot of dark Sweeney dreams. And certainly The Libertine, playing John Wilmot.”

The ‘Sweeney’ Depp is referring to is obviously Sweeney Todd, ‘Demon Barber of Fleet Street’, whom he brought to life in Tim Burton’s 2007 adaptation of the stage musical of the same name. The murderous hairdresser infamously slit his victim’s throats while they are sitting in his barber’s chair. He would then dump their corpses through a hole in the floor, where they would be collected by the evil Mrs Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) to be turned into pies.

Depp had to study hard to play the part, taking singing lessons and practising relentlessly with the character’s trademark straight razors. This hard work paid off in the end, as he was rewarded with a Golden Globe award for ‘Best Actor in a Motion Picture—Musical or Comedy’. 

As for The Libertine, which came out in 2005, Depp delved into the mind of John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, an acclaimed 17th-century English poet and playwright who lived a wild, decadent lifestyle. Wilmot lived fast, so fast that he burnt himself out and died at the age of 33 as the result of a sexually transmitted infection. Depp has said that while he had fun bringing the notorious cad to the big screen, he also described the process as ‘exhausting on every level’.

“You have a responsibility to that person and the legacy and memory of that person,” Depp told Vanity Fair of his experience playing the outlandish aristocrat. “Especially playing someone like John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, because I always felt he was this great, great poet who was never acknowledged as a great poet, but looked upon as a satirist or some silly guy who hung around the court of King Charles II. I never believed he got his due. He was a renegade, a brilliant poet who was incredibly brave.”

It’s interesting that there seems to be no commonality between the two roles, which caused Depp to have in-character dreams. One is a fictional creation in a horror setting, while the other was a real-life individual who lived a lavish, if somewhat ill-advised life—yet another contradiction in a man whose life and career have been full of them.