Johnny Depp: Strange indeed

Johnny Depp as Capt Jack Sparrow. Photo supplied.

On the face of it, Johnny Depp has done all he can to scuttle his image as a sex symbol. He's played a transvestite film director with a fetish for angora sweaters.

He's not only played a journalist, he's played a journalist on drugs. He's played any number of live-action cartoon characters, and given voice to actual cartoon characters (on SpongeBob SquarePants, for example). He's played a barber with a grudge and a razor, and had the temerity to sing Stephen Sondheim.

Still, as a female friend likes to say: "Johnny Depp? He's got it goin' on."

Yes, indeed. The actor, who has returned as the swashbuckling Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, has managed to maintain his status as a Hollywood star while defying every expectation of what such stardom requires.

Expectations? What we expect at this point is weirdness. And we get it as these 10 Depp roles attest, in order of the most outrageous:

• 'Ed Wood' (1994)
Odd choices have actually been key to Depp's popularity, which blithely crosses demographic boundaries: Very young people like his crazy movies and actorly freedom; older young people like his hipness. Older older people - even encrusted film critics - like that he makes these crazy movies at all, and looks contemptuously amused while attending the Golden Globes.

But Ed Wood is probably the epitome of eccentric Depp choices, one he imbued with a combination of artistic ambition, demented grins and utter delusion. The king of bad B movies (Plan 9 From Outer Space), Wood was the perfect vehicle for the actor's more outlandish instincts and the movie remains an underappreciated gem (although Martin Landau did win an Oscar for playing Bela Lugosi).

• 'Edward Scissorhands' (1990)
The first of seven films (thus far) with director Tim Burton, this offbeat fable about a young man with scissors for hands was Depp's first foray into the decidedly strange. Perhaps it was foretold: His film debut was A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and he's never quite left the macabre very far behind.

21 Jump Street, the TV crime series about cops infiltrating high schools, made the young Depp a teen idol, and that may have been the trigger, the thing that sent him off in entirely different directions - including the warm embrace of Burton.

• Bon Bon in 'Before Night Falls' (2000)
In a portrayal that would have made Ed Wood proud, Depp plays a flamboyant, outrageously bewigged transvestite who smuggles the manuscripts of oppressed writer Reinaldo Arenas (Javier Bardem) out of Cuba. Depp does double duty in this Julian Schnabel epic, as both Bon Bon and Lieutenant Victor, a vicious military interrogator. Depp gets only about five minutes of screen time but is unforgettable.

• The Mad Hatter in 'Alice In Wonderland' (2010)
Depp was certainly mad, but multidimensional as well, bringing a great degree of humanity to one of his more excessive characterisations.

• Willy Wonka in 'Charlie And The Chocolate Factory' (2005)
A less candy-coated movie than the Gene Wilder-powered musical of 1971, and one much closer to the dark tone of the Roald Dahl book, this Burton extravaganza features Depp making far too great an effort to be unusual. That his Willie Wonka so strongly suggests Michael Jackson makes it a little too creepy.