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Johnny Depp What Happened? Mortedcai Flops At Box Office

838 views · Published 25 January 2015 · 2:29 · Indexed 22 September 2026

Channel: Rock N' Roll True Stories · 2015 · Entertainment

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Johnny Depp used to be so cool. Back at the dawn of this new century, it was hard to imagine anyone much cooler. He may not have had a big blockbuster to his name, but he was a star nonetheless, gracing offbeat roles that made him edgier and more enigmatic than Leo or Brad. He was the grunge movie star: Soulful eyes under dirty hair, tattoos before they were mainstream, combat boots on the red carpet, and incredibly bad-ass girlfriends (Winona Ryder, Kate Moss). The more he resisted the attempts to make him a heartthrob, the hotter he became.

So how exactly did we end up here?

 
Jock (Paul Bettany) and Charlie Mortdecai (Johnny Depp) in “Mortdecai.” (David Appleby/Lionsgate)
You’ve probably seen Depp’s face on the movie posters for “Mortdecai.” They’re inescapable. Here once again is the shape-shifting star, this time flamboyantly mustachioed and dandified by a cravat and velvet blazer with pocket square. He looks at once surprised and utterly pleased with himself, though it’s hard to imagine why: The dated-looking farce about a bumbling secret agent has box office prognosticators anticipating a bomb in the making, likely to open to lower receipts this weekend than even Jennifer Lopez’s laughable thriller, “The Boy Next Door.”

“This is comfortably the actor’s worst film since ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ and even dedicated fans will find their hearts shrivelling up like week-old party balloons at its all-pervading air of clenched desperation,” says the Telegraph. And Variety warns: “Depp has entered a realm of performance so self-amused, one imagines most co-stars would struggle to forge chemistry with him.”

Trailer: 'Mortdecai'(2:28)
Johnny Depp plays Charlie Mortdecai, a charismatic British art dealer tasked with finding a stolen Goya painting. Directed by David Koepp, the film also stars Ewan McGregor and Gwyneth Paltrow. It premieres Jan. 23. (Lions Gate Entertainment)
Even the most insouciant bad boys need to grow up eventually. But how did he turn into this 51-year-old ham? Is this what a mid-life crisis looks like?

It’s not just that Depp is playing an outlandish character. He’s essentially made a career out of playing eccentrics. After the ’80s TV series “21 Jump Street” launched him to fame, he quickly broke out of the heartthrob rut, first by sending up his own pretty-boy-rebel image in 1990’s “Cry-Baby,” courtesy of the pope of trash himself, John Waters. And then there was the first of many collaborations with Tim Burton, in “Edward Scissorhands,” a bizarre gothic romantic fantasy. Depp’s face was ghostly white and scarred, his hair was matted and unruly and he was nearly mute, but his character was so sweet and sympathetic, you still hoped against reason that he’d get the girl (played by Ryder).

Depp continued to disappear into characters, and they were rarely glamorous. He was the mentally not-all-there guy who romanced the mentally not-all-there girl in “Benny and Joon” and the cross-dressing director in “Ed Wood”; he collaborated with Jim Jarmusch — patron saint of idiosyncratic indies — playing an accountant in the surreal black-and-white western “Dead Man,” and he took the role of a psychiatric patient convinced he’s the world’s greatest lover in “Don Juan DeMarco.” Critics called his performances “soulful” and “startling.”


Meanwhile, he turned down the mainstream stuff. The A-list offers certainly poured in: “Titanic” and “Legends of the Fall,” “Interview With a Vampire” and “Speed.” And the answer was always no.

Depp’s alternatives weren’t all winners. The ‘90s were a mixed bag, but even misses like the thriller “Nick of Time” took risks. The movie unfolded in real time, a 90-minute race against the clock during which Depp’s character had to save his daughter. And for every horrific misfire (ahem, “The Astronaut’s Wife”), there was a “Donnie Brasco.” In Mike Newell’s 1997 crime drama, Depp played an uncharacteristically average guy, an undercover agent tasked with getting close to a mafia hitman, and Depp held his own opposite Al Pacino.

Around this time, Depp met French singer-model-actress Vanessa Paradis, and everything seemed to be clicking. Of course Depp and Paradis would get together. Neither seemed to ever work hard at their craft or beauty, it was just effortlessly there. And obviously they didn’t get married. Something so traditional? Mon dieu! Instead, the pair had a daughter and a son and split their time between France and the U.S. When they walked the red carpet, the couple was always perfectly unconventional, him, festooned with all those rings and necklaces, and her looking like a flapper or something.

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