Johnny Depp is celebrating his third Oscars nomination for his latest role as the manic Sweeney Todd. But, he tells Rob Driscoll, that the most challenging thing about filming was having to sing
AS Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, Johnny Depp has to slit several throats before dispatching his customers’ bodies to the pie shop downstairs.
But for the heart-throb actor, who’s won an Oscar nomination this week for his bloodcurdling performance, the real terror lay not with those gruesome scenes of slaughter, but having to sing for the first time in his impressive career.
“I actually did a movie musical many years ago with John Waters, called Cry Baby, but technically that was only half me – it wasn’t really me singing,” recalls 44-year-old Depp, who’s already bagged a Golden Globe for his latest screen role.
“Tim Burton is the only person brave enough to let me try to sing. This was the first time I’d ever sung. I’ve never even sung in the shower – I was too mortified.”
Burton, of course, is the maverick director with whom Depp has now collaborated on the big screen six times – their previous films being Ed Wood, Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Corpse Bride.
Sweeney Todd, however, is without any doubt their most ambitious and riskiest project yet; a $50m big-screen version of Stephen Sondheim’s lauded 1979 Broadway musical, about the semi-mythical, razor-wielding Victorian barber with a truly twisted idea of revenge.
Who else but Burton could sell to Hollywood the idea of a movie stuffed with cult, semi-operatic show tunes and R-rated violence?
Yet the gamble has paid off handsomely. As well as Depp’s Golden Globe win earlier this month for Best Actor (in a Musical or Comedy), Sweeney Todd won a second trophy for Best Film (Musical or Comedy), and now possible Oscar success looms at the February 24 ceremony, with Depp’s Best Actor nomination – his third bid for that coveted gong, after nods for Pirates of the Caribbean and Finding Neverland.
Burton must have a masochistic streak, because Sweeney Todd is a far-reaching, hugely operatic musical – no sweet and sassy “jazz hands” numbers here – yet almost everybody in his cast is not a professional singer.
That includes his wife, actress Helena Bonham Carter, who co-stars alongside Depp as Todd’s pastry-rolling accomplice, the sad but kindly Mrs Lovett, plus Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall and Sacha Baron Cohen.
It’s nearly three decades since Burton first saw Sweeney Todd on stage, and clicked instantly with everything about it. “I was still a student, and I didn’t know if I would be making movies or working in a restaurant – I had no idea what I would be doing,” says Burton “I didn’t go to the theatre much, I’m not a big musical fan, and I didn’t even know who Stephen Sondheim was.
“I didn’t know anything about the show, but I just wandered into the theatre and it just blew me away because I’d never really seen anything that had the mixture of all those elements. I actually went three nights in a row because I loved it so much.”
Fast forward some 28 years, and Burton had only one actor in mind to play his big-screen Sweeney Todd – Johnny Depp. “Every time Johnny and I work together, we try to do something different – and singing for a whole movie is not something we’re used to,” says Burton. “We’re always wanting to stretch ourselves, and this was a perfect outlet for that.”
Right now, Depp is at the peak of his game. Considered to be one of his generation’s finest actors, his stock has skyrocketed in recent years thanks to his starring role as Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, which also brought him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.
Now, the Golden Globe for Sweeney Todd has put him into the ultimate A-lister league. It’s perhaps the least likely role with which he might have expected to win an award, however, precisely because of the singing.
In the ‘80s, Depp had played guitar in a band in Florida called The Kids, although even now he insists he never actually sang an entire song. “I was the guy who would come in and sing the harmony, very quickly,” he laughs. “So I’d never sung a song, certainly not.”
To find out whether he could sing or not before embarking on his most challenging film project, Depp called his former bandmate, Bruce Witkin, who had been the singer and bass player in The Kids, and the pair of them went to Witkins’ Los Angeles studio to record Depp singing My Friends from Sweeney Todd.
“That was the first song I ever sang in my life,” explains Depp. “It was pretty weird and scary. And I trusted Bruce to be honest with me on his verdict. He simply asked me, ‘Do you want to hear the good news or the bad news?’ I said, “Well, give me the bad news.’ And he said, ‘The bad news is that you’re going to have to do this.’”
Depp’s voice on the film is indeed surprisingly strong – an eerie, sophisticated mixture of David Bowie and Anthony Newley, some have suggested. Bonham Carter says, “It’s very sexy singing, and it sounds like him, that’s what’s exciting. He sings from the gut, and it’s a very emotional role.”
Likewise, Bonham Carter was required to deliver some very complex songs, in a role she’d hankered after since she was a teenager.
“I’ve always wanted to be in a musical, but I never thought I could sing, except in the bathroom,” she explains. “So I gave myself three months to learn.”
Despite her relationship with Burton, Bonham Carter argues she was far from a shoo-in for the role of Mrs Lovett. “I would certainly say that it made it much harder,” she says.
“Tim told me that I looked right for it, I was potentially right for it, but he had no idea if I could sing. So I said I’d try to learn, while he said, ‘It will always be good for you to try to have singing lessons.’
“I had to be righter than right, just for my sake. I didn’t want to feel like I’d got it just because I’d slept with the director! At the end of the day Stephen Sondheim had final say – and I definitely didn’t sleep with him!”
During the production of Sweeney Todd last year, Depp’s young daughter Lily-Rose fell critically ill, having caught an E.coli bacteria infection that began to cause her kidneys to shut down, and resulted in an extended stay at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital. As a result, her father had to abandon the film shoot for several weeks.
“I don’t know what anyone else’s feelings on the film set were at the time, whether I was coming back or if I wasn’t coming back,” recalls Depp, whose main home is in Paris with his partner, singer Vanessa Paradis and their children – eight-year-old Lily-Rose and five-year-old Jack.
“I really wasn’t sure if I’d be able to come back. Tim and the production were unbelievably supportive, and they said, ‘Look, we’re hitting pause.’ For that, I’ll be eternally grateful.”
Thankfully, Lily-Rose recovered fully and recently Depp gave a £1m donation to Great Ormond Street Hospital as a thank you for saving his daughter’s life. He also invited five doctors and nurses from the world-renowned children’s hospital to the premiere party of Sweeney Todd – and unknown to the public, spent four hours at the hospital telling bedtime stories to patients, dressed as Captain Jack.
Sweeney Todd – The Demon Barber of Fleet Street opens today
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