Top 10 Johnny Depp Characters

10. Sweeney Todd

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Todd is a barber who dispatches his victims by pulling a lever while they are in his barber chair, which makes them fall backward down a revolving trapdoor into the basement of his shop, generally causing them to break their necks or skulls. Just in case they are alive, he goes to the basement and “polishes them off” (slitting their throats with his straight razor). In some adaptations, the murdering process is reversed, with Todd slitting the throats of his customers before they are dispatched into the basement via the revolving trapdoor. After Todd has robbed his dead victims of their goods, his partner in crime (in some later versions, his friend, assists him in disposing of the bodies by baking their flesh into meat pies, and selling them to the unsuspecting customers of her pie shop.

9. Raoul Duke

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Duke is often characterized as being somewhat of an author surrogate, a source of quotes and opinions that Thompson would not necessarily be able to get away with himself, and actions that Thompson didn’t want to admit he had committed himself. He is portrayed as a cynical, eccentric hedonist. He is in a near-perpetual state of intoxication on whatever drugs happen to be available, ranging from marijuana to amyl nitrite to adrenochrome.

8. Gilbert Grape

What’s Eating Gilbert Grape

In the small town of Endora, Iowa, where Gilbert Grape is busy caring for Arnie, his brother with a developmental disability as they wait for the many tourists’ trailers to pass through town during their “yearly ritual” of camping at a nearby recreational area. His mother, Bonnie is morbidly overweight, after years of depression following her husband’s suicide. With Bonnie unable to care for the children by herself, Gilbert has taken responsibility for repairing their old farmhouse and looking after Arnie. Gilbert’s unusual life circumstances threaten to get in the way of his budding romance. Gilbert gets hard on Arnie but his guilt is compounded by his family’s anger.

7. Ichabod Crane

Sleepy Hollow

His belief in improved methods of justice, new investigative techniques and scientific procedures is resented by his superiors, who dispatch him north to the Hudson Valley and the small town of Sleepy Hollow.  As in the original story, his horse is named Gunpowder. Ichabod’s most notable traits in the movie include an ahead-of-his-time liking for post-mortem examinations and scientific methods, as well as his being very quirky and skittish, as well as disgusted by death and blood, despite his occupation. It is Ichabod who finally banishes the Hessian Headless Horseman to Hell and sends Lady van Tassel, the woman who has been controlling the undead rider, with him.

6. Glen Lantz

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Glen Lantz is a student at Springwood High and the boyfriend of Nancy Thompson. He begins experiencing a series of tormenting dreams featuring a man who later turns out to be Freddy Krueger, though he refuses to admit this to his friends. Despite the death of his friends Tina and Rod, Glen does not believe that their dreams were responsible. When Nancy is preparing to confront Krueger in her dreams, she asks Glen to stay awake and wake her up at a pre-determined time to help her escape danger. Glen instead falls asleep and Nancy is unable to wake him due to interference from his father Walter, who sees her as a bad influence. Freddy pulls Glen through his bed and murders him, sending a stream of blood vertically through the bed to the ceiling of his room. Nancy later finds his headphones in Freddy’s realm. This was Johnny Depp’s first on-screen role. He did his own stunt for the bedroom death scene.

5. John Dillinger

Public Enemies

Portrayed as an american gangster and bank-robber in the Depression-era United States. He was charged, but never convicted, with the murder of an East Chicago police officer. This was his only kill. Dillinger embraced the criminal lifestyle behind bars in the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. Upon being admitted to the prison he is quoted as saying, “I will be the meanest bastard you ever saw when I get out of here.

4. Willy Wonka

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Willy Wonka’s behavior is viewed more as a sympathetic character flaw. These aspects of Wonka’s personality are explained in Burton’s version by a strained, conflicted relationship with his father, the dentist Wilbur Wonka – a character created exclusively for this film. Wonka had a traumatic childhood, as his father locked him into dreadful orthodontics that bore more resemblance to a medieval torture device, and every Halloween, he would burn his son’s candy in the fireplace. Eventually, Willy tastes chocolate after sneaking a piece that had fallen from the fire, and starts getting ideas for other candies. Shortly after, he runs away from home when his father forbids him from becoming a candy maker. When he becomes an adult, Wonka opens his own candy store, with Grandpa Joe being one of Wonka’s first employees. Then several of Wonka’s rivals, notably Mr. Slugworth, plant spies in Wonka’s factory to steal Wonka’s recipes. Wonka became very concerned that his rivals might ruin him and he closed his factory forever by sending all his workers home not sure of which one has been helping his rivals. Additionally, in Burton’s film, Wonka initially refuses to allow Charlie to bring his family to his factory. An eventual reconciliation between Wonka and his father causes Wonka to change his mind and allow Charlie’s family to move in with him as well.

3. Edward Scissorhands

Edward Scissorhands

The sensitive and misunderstood creation of an inventor. After the inventor’s death, he was left all alone in the castle without regular hands. Meet Edward Scissorhands. The inventor was inspired to make an artificial man due to the anthropomorphic appearance of his other inventions. His final result was a humanlike young boy who had everything except for hands, but the inventor had a heart attack and died while in the act of creating a pair of real hands for Edward, leaving him “unfinished” forever. His isolation allowed him to live without a sense of reality, seems cruel to everyone, he has the intrinsic goodness which few possess.

2. The Mad Hatter

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

In Tim Burton’s 2010 version of Alice in Wonderland, the Hatter is portrayed by Johnny Depp. He is very brave and loyal to the White Queen, and becomes very emotionally attached to Alice and goes to great lengths to protect her. In this version, his full name is Tarrant Hightopp. Burton explained that Depp “tried to find a grounding to the character, something that you feel, as opposed to just being mad. In a lot of versions it’s a very one-note kind of character and you know his goal was to try and bring out a human side to the strangeness of the character.” The orange hair is an allusion to the mercury poisoning suffered by many hatters who used mercury to cure pelts. According to Depp: “I think he was poisoned, very, very poisoned, and it was coming out through his hair, through his fingernails and eyes.” In an interview, Depp stated his experience was “A dream come true” and that the Hatter is like “A mood ring, his emotions are veryclose to the surface”

1. Captain Jack Sparrow

Pirates of the Caribbean

Sparrow is a trickster who uses wit and deceit to attain his goals, preferring to end disputes verbally instead of by force. He walks with a slightly drunken swagger and has slurred speech and flailing hand gestures, which are slightly based on Tuco, from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. In the context of the films, Sparrow is one of the Brethren Court, the Pirate Lords of the Seven Seas. He can be treacherous, but survives mostly by using wit and negotiation rather than weapons or force, preferring to flee most dangerous situations and fight only when necessary. Sparrow is introduced seeking to regain his ship, the Black Pearl, from his mutinous first mate, Hector Barbossa, and attempts to escape his blood debt to the legendary Davy Jones while battling the East India Trading Co.