Deploying the deadpan zaniness that has served him so well on-screen, Johnny Depp apologised for missing a Japanese press conference by saying he’d been attacked by a chupacabra, a mythical spiny beast.
“I was attacked yesterday morning by a very rarely seen or experienced animal called the chupacabra,” he told a tittering crowd. “I fought with it for hours. They’re very persistent, very mean. And I’m pretty sure it came in my suitcase. I threw him off the 23rd floor, so we’ll never see him again.”
He also revealed that he managed to eat the legendarily poisonous blowfish and lived to tell the tale.
Depp’s antics are part of his promotional tour for Mortdecai, a comedy caper in which he plays a debonair art dealer tasked with recovering a stolen painting, alongside Gwyneth Paltrow and Ewan McGregor. So far it hasn’t been successful at the box office, scoring Depp’s worst opening weekend in 15 years in the US and a lowly seventh place in the UK box office chart – though as with The Lone Ranger and others, its foreign market may end up being much bigger.
