Johnny Depp Takes Us Inside The Mind of The Mad Hatter

Written by Sheila Roberts Monday, 08 March 2010 15:05

Interview

One of the highlights of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is Johnny Depp's performance as The Mad Hatter; here, we chat to the star about his relationship with the director and the wonders of green screen...

This is the seventh film you’ve done with Tim Burton. When he came to you and asked you if you’d like to play the Mad Hatter, what was your reaction? Why did you want to play that character?

To be honest, he could have said Alice and I would have said yes! I would have done whatever character Tim wanted. But, certainly, the fact that it was the Mad Hatter was a bonus because of the great challenge to try to find this guy and not just be a rubber ball that you heave into an empty room and watch it bounce all over the place. [I wanted] to find that part of the character but also [add] a little bit more of the history or gravity to the guy.

How did your professional and personal relationship with him grow on Alice In Wonderland?

I was Tim’s worst nightmare! Each time out of the gate with Tim, especially with Tim, the initial thing for me is to obviously come up with a character. But then, there's a certain amount of pressure where I go, "Jesus, will this be the one where I disappoint him?" You know what I mean? So, I try really hard, especially early on, to come up with something that's very different, that he hasn't experienced before and that we haven't experienced together before, and that will stimulate and inspire him to make choices based on that character. I try not to embarrass him, basically.

There's the whole Hatter's dilemma, really, which is where the term, "Mad as a Hatter," came from. The amount of mercury that they used in the glue to make the hats was damaging. So, in terms of looking at Hatter from that perspective as this guy who is literally physically and emotionally damaged goods and a little obtuse, I took that and decided that, as opposed to just this hyper-nutty guy, he should explore all sides of the personality at an extreme level. So, he could go, from one second, being very highfalutin with a lot of levity, and then straight into some kind of dangerous potential rage, and then tragedy. It was really interesting trying to map it out.

Was there a time in your own career where you felt like you were Johnny In Wonderland?

My whole experience on the ride since day one has been pretty surreal in this business and defies logic. I'm still completely shocked that I still get jobs and am still around. But, I guess, more than anything, it has been kind of a wonderland. I'm been very lucky.

Did you dream that it was going to be that way when you started?

No, not at all. I had no idea where anything was going. But, you can’t -- it's almost impossible to predict anything like that. I had no idea. Truly, I felt after I had done Cry Baby with John Waters and Edward Scissorhands with Tim that they were going to cut me off right then. You know what I mean? I had felt, at that point, I was on solid ground and I knew where I was going and where I wanted to go, and I was sure that they would nix me out of the gig. But, luckily, I'm still here.

You've created so many memorable characters. When you take on something new like the Mad Hatter, do you have to look back at your own work to make sure that you don't repeat anything?

You definitely have to, I mean, at a certain point, especially if you’re dealing with…. I've played English a number of times, and used an English accent a number of times, so it becomes a little bit of an obstacle course to go, "Oh, that's teetering into Captain Jackville," or "This one is teetering over into [Charlie and the] Chocolate [Factory] or [Willy] Wonka." You've got to really pay attention to the places you've been. But, hopefully, also, that's part of it. That's the great challenge. You may get it wrong. There's a very good possibility that you can fall flat on your face, but again I think that's a healthy thing for an actor.

You seem to be going through the entire canon of 19th century fantasy literature in your films, from Edgar Allen Poe’s Sleepy Hollow to James Barrie’s Finding Neverland and now Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. What is the attraction to that era's literature?

I just adore it, from certainly JM Barrie and the wonderful characters he created to Lewis Carroll, but even French literature. When you read Baudelaire, or over in the States, Poe, it’s like Tim said about Lewis Carroll, you open those books, or you open the Flowers of Evil, and you begin to read, and if it were written today, you'd be absolutely stupefied by the work. It's this incredible period where the work is timeless and ageless. So yes, I love all those guys. It’s my deep passion, you know, those great 19th century writers.

When did the original book, Alice in Wonderland, first come into your life and how did it influence you?

Even though you can't quite place when the book or the story came into your life, I do remember vaguely, maybe when I was roughly 5 years old, reading versions of Alice in Wonderland. But, the thing is the characters. You always know the characters. Everyone knows the characters, and they're very well-defined characters, which I always thought was so fascinating. Most people who haven't read the book definitely know the characters and reference them. For me, I went back - ironically, it was only maybe a year prior to Tim calling - and I had re-read Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, and what I took away from it was all these very strange, little cryptic nuggets that he'd thrown in there, and I was really intrigued by them and became fascinated by them because they were asking questions that couldn't be answered almost, or were making statements that you couldn't quite understand, like "I'm investigating things that begin with the letter ‘M.’" That took me through a whole stratosphere of possibilities, and then doing a little research and discovering that the M is mercury. And then, "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" Those things just became so important to the character and you realize it the more you read the book. If I read the book again today, I'd find a hundred other things that I missed the last time, so it’s constantly changing, the book.

Read Interview with Tim Burton
Read Interview With Helena Bonham-Carter, Anne Hathaway, Michael Sheen
Read Interview With Jemma Powell
Watch Alice in Wonderland Trailer