Johnny Depp: Career over? Don’t be so sure

What now for Johnny Depp? Once Hollywood’s quirkiest heartthrob, the Fantastic Beasts and Pirates of the Caribbean star faces career ruin after the High Court ruled allegations he had beaten former wife Amber Heard were “substantially true”.

“It’s one thing for Charles Bukowski, one of Depp’s heroes, to behave badly and be controversial. Charles Bukowski never sued a newspaper,” says Variety executive editor Steven Gaydos, following the failure of Depp’s legal action against The Sun over its description of him as a “wife beater”.

“He never made that fatal error. In Depp’s case, I won’t call it a fatal error. I will call it a major strategic error. If you are managing a company based upon your image and upon the currency of Johnny Depp as heartthrob and bad boy and slightly naughty, crossing the line sexy dude… and you [unsuccessfully] sue someone for depicting you as a wife beater – it’s hugely damaging.”

There is never a good moment to lose a domestic violence defamation case. However, for Depp, 57, the timing is particularly grim, crowning as it does a decade of dazzling decline that includes his 2018 ejection from the Pirates of the Caribbean series. It’s just 10 years since he appeared to confirm, beyond doubt, his box office midas touch by leading Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland to a $1bn global haul.

Could any other actor have maintained their dignity portraying the Mad Hatter in a bonkers Burton jamboree? Yet in hindsight it is clear that Alice in Wonderland was merely one final moment of glory. Thereafter Depp’s years of living rigorously up to the archetype of the tousle-haired libertine caught up with him with a vengeance.

The fall, when it came, was shockingly swift. Flop followed flop, starting, just a few months after Alice in Wonderland, with The Tourist, his bleary-eyed two-hander with Angelina Jolie. And then came the triple disasters of The Rum Diary (where he met Heard), Dark Shadows and The Lone Ranger.

The $250m failure of 2013’s The Lone Ranger, in which the star applied black and white facepaint to portray Comanche scout Tonto, will have been particularly painful. Depp was desperate for another cash-cow franchise to go alongside Pirates of the Caribbean. He needed the extra income to support a lifestyle that had more in common with that of a dissolute French monarch than with an A-lister with waning commercial appeal.

Depp seemed to take pride in his rakishness and in speculation he was blowing $2m a month in a combination of custody payments to former partner Vanessa Paradis, the upkeep of a 37-acre estate in Provence that included an entire village, and maintaining a $22m yacht. When in a 2018 interview Rolling Stone brought up rumours of his lavish spending on wine, Depp leaned into his persona of high-living wastrel. “It’s insulting to say that I spent $30,000 on wine,” he said. “Because it was far more.”

“Johnny Depp is almost 60. He appears to be going through the midlife crisis of all time,” says Gaydos. “Although it’s hard to call 60 midlife.

“He just really has boxed himself in to a large degree. The magnitude of the detail in the portrait of Johnny Depp we now have isn’t beautiful. Beautiful is a word that up until 10 years ago you would have used to describe him – beautiful man, physically beautiful.”

The looks and the cherubic glow that illuminated his performances in Nineties hits such as Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood are long gone. Instead he has been plagued by rumours of lethargy and poor punctuality on set and even whisperings that he was fed his lines through an earpiece during the making of 2017’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.

“We want to bring in a new energy and vitality. I love the [Pirates] movies, but part of the reason [reboot writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese] are so interesting is that we want to give it a kick in the pants,” said Disney studio production chief Sean Bailey. “And that’s what I’ve tasked them with.”

Depp certainly appeared bloated and drawn on the steps of the High Court in London. Nor will he have had much beauty sleep since the libel case loss, which has led to speculation he might be sacked from the third, as yet untitled, Fantastic Beasts film shooting in Hertfordshire.

“It’s hugely damaging,” says Gaydos. “Could he be dropped from a major film franchise like Fantastic Beasts? Yes. Could he lose major product endorsements like Dior? Yes. These are all damaging setbacks he has brought on himself 100 per cent.”

Depp is pursuing a second defamation case, in the United States and against Amber Heard over a Washington Post opinion article headlined “I spoke up against sexual violence – and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change”. He claims the piece led to his being dropped from Pirates of the Caribbean.  

With the suit still pending, the American media has largely held back from declaring Depp a busted flush. In that context, it is worth noting this is the story of a US star losing a case in a British court. The extent to which the shockwaves ripple back to Los Angeles remains to be seen. With the US consumed by presidential election coverage, Depp’s libel defeat has yet to be diagnosed there as a career-ending setback.

A great deal will depend on how the public reacts to the judgement, says Gaydos.

“It’s a controversial court decision,” he says. “It’s not as clear-cut as some things might be. Which is to say, there are some things that do get a person cancelled in the business today. And I wouldn’t say for certainty that this court decision is one of them. It’s hugely damaging… I think Depp is not finished. I think he’s hugely damaged. It’s an own goal, obviously.”

“He’s facing a very tough time,” adds veteran publicist Dennis Davidson of DDA Consulting in an email. “Domestic violence is, rightly, toxic and he will find little sympathy anywhere.”

“The hope is always that we’re moving forward – that, finally, allegations of abuse will be treated with the severity they deserve, and that Hollywood will truly reckon with the damage inflicted when those individuals are allowed to hold positions of power,” says Independent film critic Clarisse Loughrey.

“But, unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in yet. The film industry, and almost every other industry on the planet, actively works to shield abusers. We know this. Victims are told, over and over again, that their trauma doesn’t matter. Two years ago, a film directed by a man with a long history of sexual abuse allegations was nominated for Best Picture.

“Media outlets still run fawning interviews with Woody Allen. Mel Gibson is still a star. I’ve been dismayed to see the Depp case turned into gossip fodder. But it also hasn’t particularly surprised me. It’s easy to declare now that Depp’s career is over, but that doesn’t exactly fit the narratives we see over and over again in this industry. Men that powerful simply can’t lose.”

Amid the overspending and the poor movie choices, Depp’s biggest mistake may have been to identify too closely with his heroes. He worships Bukowski and Hunter S Thompson, renegade writers who dined out on their reputation for recklessness. And he clearly sees himself as an outlaw in the tradition of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, upon whom he based the character of Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean (Depp also narrated the audiobook of Richards’s memoirs).

Depp, though, is neither a transgressive journalist writing in the pre-politically correct 1970s nor a rock icon who can get away with “cocaine for breakfast” (one of the details of Depp’s lifestyle to emerge in court). Movie stars are held to different standards. Nobody takes their kids to Rolling Stones concerts. However, families are the market Disney is chasing with Fantastic Beasts. Depp seems to have lost sight of what sort of beast he himself is.

Is there a way back? In the short term, the danger is of Depp’s professional support network melting away. In 2016, he left his long-time agents UTA to sign for CAA, the industry leader. CAA has since been criticised for enabling bad behaviour by its clients and was implicated in the #MeToo scandal.

In 2018, Courtney Love claimed CAA blacklisted her over her criticisms of Harvey Weinstein 13 years previously. CAA has publicly apologised “to any person the agency let down” amid reports that it continued to send actresses for private meetings with Weinstein despite having been warned of his behaviour. Having gone through all that, will it remain loyal to Depp?

Warner Brothers for its part may, as stated above, decide it is prudent to cut ties with Depp as filming recommences on the untitled third Fantastic Beasts film at its Leavesden complex. The Harry Potter spin-off is already mired in contentiousness following JK Rowling’s remarks about trans people and claims of “gay washing” over its neutered portrayal of the Young Dumbledore.

Jettisoning Depp wouldn’t be as disruptive as it might initially appear. His character, Dark Wizard Grindelwald, is a shapeshifter after all, and was initially portrayed by Colin Farrell. Swapping Depp out for a less problematic star will be a tempting get-out.

Either way, how can Depp achieve redemption in the longer term? His lawyers have vowed to appeal the “perverse and bewildering” High Court ruling. So a public campaign of contrition appears unlikely.

“I don’t know if at this point in life he’s interested in reversing course or putting a check on it,” says Gaydos. “You can get away with that image as long as you’re not hurting anybody else.

“If you’re hurting yourself, if you’re damaging your liver, that’s one thing. If you’re damaging someone else’s liver that’s another. His ego, pride, brand, image were all hugely damaged by that Sun depiction of him as a wife beater. He felt compelled to defend himself. It was a huge strategic error.”