Johnny Depp has dismissed the tendency of Hollywood stars to launch music careers off the back of their success on the big screen, labelling the trend “sickening”.
Depp, who has performed on stage or recorded with acts such as Oasis and Marilyn Manson, said he was content to remain a low-key musician by contrast with some of his peers.
“That whole idea for me is a sickening thing, it’s always just made me sick,” the occasional guitarist told reporters in Berlin in advance of the world premiere of his latest film Mortdecai. “I’ve been very lucky to play on friends’ records and it’s still going. Music is still part of my life. But you won’t be hearing the Johnny Depp Band. That won’t ever exist.”
Oscar winners Jared Leto and Russell Crowe, along with Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Lopez, Zooey Deschanel, Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr and Depp’s Mortedecai co-star Gwyneth Paltrow, are among the Hollywood luminaries who have enjoyed successful or not-so successful musical sojourns.
Clarifying his views, the actor continued: “The kind of luxury now is, anybody with a certain amount of of success, if you have a kind of musical being, you can go out and start a band and capitalise on your work in other areas. But I hate the idea, ‘Come see me play the guitar because you’ve seen me in 12 movies’. It shouldn’t be [that way]. You want the people who are listening to the music to only be interested in the music.”
Action comedy Mortdecai stars Depp in the lead role of Charlie Mortdecai, a dandyish and debonaire art dealer who finds himself caught up in a race to recover a stolen painting. David Koepp’s film, based on the 1970s Kyril Bonfiglioli novels about the moustachioed, aristocratic buffoon (along with a posthumously published fifth instalment from 1999) also features Paul Bettany, Jeff Goldblum and Olivia Munn. It arrives in UK and US cinemas this weekend.
