Johnny Depp's Best Movie And TV Roles To Date

The fundamental role of any actor or actress is no different from a magician. Both are in the business of creating illusions. They weave their veils, cast their spells, and take the audience on a magical mystery tour into faraway realms. Like a Hollywood version of Gandalf, Johnny Depp has been taking moviegoers by the hand and leading them into strange and unexpected places for over three decades. If movies are magic, the boy from Kentucky is one of the top wand wavers. Good actors will sweat blood and tears to make you believe they're something they're not, but a great actor will convince you they always were the character they're playing – you just didn't know it! As Depp once said, "With any part you play, there is a certain amount of yourself in it. There has to be, otherwise, it's just not acting, it's lying."

Depp is a master at bringing the most bizarre characters to life and delivering performances that linger in the mind's eye long after the final reel has spun. Depp's played a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a perp, and a pawn. He's the king of cult for good reason: his solid-gold acting ability. When a movie ends and the lights go on, the spell cast by a movie breaks. However, certain characters have a habit of hitching a ride home with us and setting up home in our heads. Depp has created a whole bus full of such personalities. Here are a few of them.

Shot completely in black and white, Jim Jarmush's 1995 movie "Dead Man" allowed Johnny Depp to star in what has since been dubbed a "psychedelic Western." Playing a character who shares his name with the visionary English poet William Blake, Depp plays a mild-mannered accountant with horn-rimmed glasses and a checked suit who hops a train in search of work as a bookkeeper in the gun-tooting and lawless Wild West. After landing in a quaint little town called Machine, Blake finds the townsfolk are intensely hostile and the job previously promised to him has gone. Things take a turn for the worse when Blake is later caught up in a deadly love triangle and kills a man in self-defense. From then on, Blake is on the run and his odyssey as a dead man walking truly begins.

Fleeing bounty hunters, Blake meets traveling companion Nobody, who believes Blake is the reincarnation of the famous poet. Together the two road buddies travel into the dark soul of America in a strange and dream-like trip."Dead Man" is a Kafka-esque film and Depp gives a commanding performance as a passive soul who is transformed not through ambition or initiative but by a set of bizarre and chaotic circumstances. By the end of the movie, Blake is unrecognizable from the bookish and timid soul he once was. In his place, we have a painted-faced, fur-coat-clad, Stetson-wearing, cold-blooded killer who looks into the abyss and finds it starring right back at him.

Since moving images first started to flicker and fade on the big screen, Hollywood has been responsible for all sot of weird and wonderful characters. Yet they don't come much stranger than "Ed Wood." In addition to writing over 80 pulp fiction thrillers, Wood was also a director of low-budget flicks that would one day, thanks to his posthumous Golden Turkey Award for Worst Director of All Time in 1980, become cult classics. Iconic movies such as "Plan 9 from Outer Space," "Orgy of the Dead," and "Necromania" have delighted audiences who love cringeworthy special effects, eccentric actors, outlandish scripts, and technical errors. In a CGI age that is preened, polished, and perfected, Wood's films stand out. It's probably what attracted Depp to playing the tragic Director in Tim Burton's 1994 classic ode to the courage of following your vision, no matter how weird.

Deep is never better than when portraying maverick misfits and Wood is definitely in the elite echelons of those destined to always be on the outside looking in. The genius of Burton's film and Depp's performance is that it introduces Wood to an audience that would have probably given him and his movies a wild berth. It humanizes one of Hollywood's most notorious outcasts and makes a hero of an individual whose ambition outreaches his talent. When the final credits roll, one cannot help but muse poignantly muse on W.B. Yeats' famous line, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

John Dillinger is something of an American folk hero who fought tooth and nail against a system he despised. He was also a violent criminal who robbed banks. Michael Mann's movie "Public Enemies" is refreshing in that it focuses on the man behind the myth, rather than softening and sanitizing the dubious character of a well-known historic figure with sentimental nostalgia. In an unusually hard-boiled and unflamboyant performance, Depp uses the cold, hard facts of Dillinger's life to create a no-nonsense, disciplined, and oddly unfeeling character. Depp's Dillinger is unusual in that he doesn't fall into the trap of acting like Hollywood gangsters. Depp is all brutality and practicality, with none of the hot-headedness, inner conflict, or devilish charisma of such silver screen outlaws as Michael Corleone or Tony Montana.

In "Public Enemies" the audience learns that Dillinger loves to rob banks, hates authority, and is driven by a hidden and huge self-destructive compulsion, but it doesn't seek to explain why. This could be a narrative weakness but it's not. Dillinger is not a nice person and Depp's performance makes no apologies for this. It doesn't seek to explain, excuse, or justify his character through childhood flashbacks or psychological clues; it just presents him as a pure force of nature who does what he does because he wants to and doesn't care about the consequences. It's one of Depp's most understated performances, but that only adds to its power.

All great relationships have to begin somewhere. The explosive chemistry between Johnny Depp and Tim Burton first came to life in 1990, when the world was introduced to "Edward Scissorhands." Billed as "The story of an uncommonly gentle man," the movie is almost a Frankenstein's monster for modern sensibilities. Depp plays a humanoid with a haircut from hell and intense eyes. Yet that's not the strangest thing about this sensitive and kindly creature who was cooked up in a lab. His most bizarre attribute is that he has huge scissor blades for his hands. This makes him extremely handy when it comes to trimming hedges or cutting hair, but it's a bit of an issue when it comes to blending in and having intimate relationships.

The film documents how cruelly fickle society is, at first embracing quirky misfits but then using them as scapegoats and descending into mob mentality. Depp's elusive otherness is used to great effect as he is blown from pillar to post in wild-eyed innocence. His earnestness and willingness to do the right thing in an attempt to earn acceptance are at times heartbreaking. Depp was romantically involved with co-star Winona Ryder during filming, which gives their scenes together a bit of extra sparkle. However, with Depp's dialogue thin on the ground, it's his eyes that do the talking. Depp acts like a seasoned great of the silver screen; the yearning and hurt are palpable without him saying a word.

Based loosely on Washington Irving's short story, Tim Burton's 1999 movie "Sleepy Hollow" is an exquisitely shot masterpiece that hams it up more than the Hammer horror classics it pays tribute to. It's got gothic villains, dark shadows, a fainting hero, swirling mists, and even features Mr. Christopher Lee himself in a memorable cameo. Johnny Depp plays the part of the hyper-rational Ichabod Crane, who's hot on the trail of a killer merrily decapitating his way through the small town of Sleepy Hollow. The locals believe the killer is a headless horseman, but Crane, being a modern and enlightened sort of guy for the year 1799, has no truck with such superstitious poppycock—that is, until the forward-thinking sleuth comes face-to-face with the creature from the bowels of hell and promptly faints.

"Sleepy Hollow" is visually spectacular and hugely entertaining. As Crane, Depp has the opportunity to play an uptight, fastidious, and obsessive character who embodies an individual's burning desire to wrestle control back from the chaos and uncertainty of superstition and put reason and rhyme back in the driver's seat. Crane is no classic textbook hero and his fierce commitment to scientific procedures and the infallible nature of the analytical mind belies his neurotic shortcomings. Depp appears to relish playing someone the actor once described as someone who was a, "very delicate, fragile person who was maybe a little too in touch with his feminine side, like a frightened little girl" (via All That's Interesting).

Playing a world-famous fictional character like the Mad Hatter is a big burden for an actor to bear. An audience has preconceived notions of how one of Lewis Carroll's most famous creations should walk, talk, and look. Get it right and they'll say it was a pedestrian performance; get it wrong, and they'll say you failed abysmally. Either way, you're dancing with fire. Such considerations didn't appear to hamper Johnny Depp in his scene-stealing portrayal of The Mad Hatter in Tim Burton's "Alice In Wonderland." Throwing himself into the role with wild abandon, Depp's Hatter is a comical yet strangely serious creature whose absurdity masks profundity.

It's to Depp's credit that he doesn't play the part with all pantomime flourish and fury. Instead, he opts to give the Hatter a gravitas that other actors may have neglected. From his first appearance, the audience realizes they're getting a unique version of the Hatter. Like a strange hybrid of Victorian clown and romantic poet, Depp's Hatter is a kindly if eccentric gentleman with a twee voice, prone to spouting nonsense and making an uncomfortable amount of eye contact. Yet the real key to the deep waters raging beneath the calmest and stillest of exteriors is when the Hatter breaks into a guttural Scottish brogue. According to Depp, he took his accent cues from Glasgow, and explained, "There is a gravity to Glasgow in terms of the accent. There is a gravity and strength to it that I really appreciated."

Made in 2001 and directed by Ted Demme, "Blow" is a Johnny Depp vehicle that often flies under the radar. That's a shame, because he gives a rock-star performance as real-life cocaine smuggler George Jung, who learns the hard way that although crime may pay, the devil always collects. From high-school football star to a trusted lieutenant of the Medellin Cartel, Jung's slow corruption and indifference to the lives he blights is an engaging if sometimes depressing tale. Jung claimed to have imported about 85% of the cocaine flooding America's streets in the late 1970s, and so his story was tailor-made for a riveting film.

From fresh-faced youngster who falls into the drug trade by accident to high-roller with the keys to the kingdom, and, finally, to a man incarcerated and regretful, Depp is in fine fettle as he portrays Jung's rise and fall. The actor seemingly relishes playing a happy-go-lucky criminal who gets through the trickiest situations on a wing and a prayer. After serving nearly two decades behind bars for his involvement in drug smuggling, Jung was released in 2014 and passed away this year. Depp felt a close connection with Jung and told Esquire Middle East, "You know I can only see George with a big f***ing smile on his face. Truly it's a huge loss because the man lived life with no qualms, he was fearless. He was a very special guy. He was the prisoner philosopher."

Everyone's got to start somewhere. Johnny Depp's lucky break came in the late 1980s. In the guise of TV cop Tom Hanson, his face became familiar to millions. "21 Jump Street" wasn't exactly groundbreaking and revolved around a bunch of young cops who could pass as teenagers, but it was the perfect vehicle for Depp to begin his journey. Despite the lack of depth to the character of Hanson, Depp's charisma, presence, and ability shine through. He appeared in "21 Jump Street" from the pilot episode and stuck around to the end of the fourth season. It limped along for one more season, but couldn't go the distance without its star player.

The show made Depp a teen idol. This didn't sit well with Depp, who wanted to be taken seriously. In an interview with The Telegraph in 2006, he explained, "It started to get a little showboaty, you know what I mean? It just started to become false. It started to become this action-packed can of soup, you know? You just market it, and send it out." Fortunately for Depp, a young director named Tim Burton was waiting around the corner to help Depp travel to places no one could have possibly imagined at the time.