It is hard to believe now, but for a big part of his career, a Johnny Depp movie was not a box office draw. Sure, after a buddy of his named Nicolas Cage advised him to stop trying to be a rock star and get into acting, he quickly found roles. Depp’s very first film was 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, one of the great horror franchise starters.
Despite his relatively small part getting killed by Freddy Krueger in a waterbed, he made enough of an impact for director Wes Craven to essentially cast a lookalike in another horror franchise. A few years later, Depp became known to wider audiences as one of the glossy-magazine ready undercover cops in 21 Jump Street. He would not have a hit film until 1990, when he played the title character in Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands.
Then, for years, Depp built a reputation as something of an outsider star. He had the look of a red carpet star, but he chose offbeat roles in indie films like What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and Benny & Joon. “Johnny Depp movie” had a certain critical cachet, but he would not become an A-lister until 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
During that time, he partnered for the second time with Tim Burton for the single best movie in either of their careers. And ironically, it was a movie about the man generally regarded as the single worst director in Hollywood history.