Johnny Depp says he used to look for fear in people’s eyes as a sign he was doing his job properly.
Now, as he steps back behind the camera for the first time in nearly three decades, he admits he’s still not interested in playing it safe, and that making people uncomfortable is all part of the process.
The 62-year-old actor has returned to directing with Modigliani -Three Days on the Wing of Madness, a drama about the Italian painter, which lands in cinemas today.
It’s his first time in the director’s chair since 1997’s The Brave, a Marlon Brando collaboration that was panned by critics and quietly vanished.
Depp, once one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars, has spent recent years navigating a bruising fallout from his public legal battles with ex-wife Amber Heard, which included allegations of domestic abuse that he denied.
The lengthy court cases and intense media scrutiny left Depp effectively frozen out by many major studios. “It can be very limiting, especially creatively,” he said of the industry that once put him at the top of the box office. “I’m not going to go in and do a tap dance for anybody.”
Instead, Depp says the years of being blacklisted have only deepened his resolve to follow his instincts rather than seek industry approval.
Reflecting on his decades in film, he admitted he often found it encouraging when studio executives appeared nervous about the direction he was taking a character.
“When I saw fear in them, especially about what I was doing, it fuelled me,” he said, speaking at the Red Sea International Film Festival. “If they weren’t worried, then I’d feel I wasn’t doing my job enough.”
It’s this mindset that has shaped Depp’s approach to Modigliani, a film he had not intended to direct until Al Pacino, an old friend and co-star from Donnie Brasco, called him out of the blue and urged him to take on the project.
Pacino, who had long wanted to see Modigliani’s life on screen, also agreed to star in the film, which follows the artist over 72 chaotic hours in Paris.
Depp cast Italian actor Riccardo Scamarcio in the lead role after spotting “something beautifully, poetically savage” in him, and rewrote scenes at the last minute with “more dialogue to come” scribbled across pages, keeping the production tense and alive.
Scamarcio, who admitted he felt “a mountain of pressure” acting opposite Pacino, described it as like taking a penalty in the final minute of a football match. For Depp, that pressure and unpredictability is the point.
This project, he said, wouldn’t have survived under the rigid expectations of a big studio, and he has no interest in shaping his work to meet others’ comfort levels. For Depp, discomfort is often where the creative spark lives.
Now filming Day Drinker with Penélope Cruz, Depp appears to be finding his way back into the industry on his own terms. Whether Modigliani marks a permanent return remains to be seen, but he is clear that he won’t be smoothing out the edges to fit in.
“If people are comfortable, it might mean you’re playing it too safe,” Depp suggested. And at this stage in his career, playing it safe simply isn’t on the cards.
Modigliani - Three Days on the Wing of Madness is in cinemas now.
