It was when I was watching a sex scene between Johnny Depp and Marion Cotillard in the film “Public Enemies” that it hit me: “Sexiest Man Alive” or not, this is just weird.
Johnny Depp? Looking more like himself than most roles he’s played in the last five years? Making out with someone on the big screen?
You’d think that a role putting People magazine’s male sex symbol of the year in an intimate situation would elicit a much different reaction than the awkward discomfort I felt at the time.
And it wasn’t because my husband was sitting right next to me.
Don’t get me wrong. I wholeheartedly believe Depp deserves the magazine’s annual honor. And I’m not alone. How many times have I had to hear – from friends, from teens, heck, from my own mother – how attractive the 46-year-old actor is?
But it’s in his more eccentric roles, including his latest unsexy turn as the Mad Hatter in Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland,” that he seems most suitable -- and most comfortable. And you know what, Johnny? I’m fine with that, too.
What with all the vivid makeup, the frizzy orange hair and the neo-Victorian costumes in his current role, you’d think Depp was going out on an experimental limb to show us his range. After all, when you’ve been voted "SMA" not once but twice (something only Hollywood heartthrobs George Clooney and Brad Pitt can also claim), there must be a certain pressure to show off that smoldering sex appeal.
Not so for Depp.
In fact, when looking down a list of his big-screen roles, you see more they are more often than not eccentric loners who wouldn’t know romance if it pushed them down a rabbit hole, sailed the high seas or threw an everlasting gobstopper in their face.
His characters are not only commitment-free, eschewing any sort of love interest (female or male), but aggressively asexual. Not a bearskin rug or fireplace in sight.
And that seems to be the way Depp -- and, curiously, the box office -- appear to like it.
Take “Alice,” for example. As of March 15, Burton’s reimagining of the Lewis Carroll classic has pulled in a whopping $209 million domestically, according to Box Office Mojo. And that’s little more than one week after its opening.
Audiences don’t have to look too far back on their Depp cheat sheets to find another example of a profitable albeit partner-free leading man. Anyone who has gone to the multiplex in the last seven years will recognize a certain swishy Capt. Jack Sparrow, who is a lot more interested in pirate’s booty than the other kind.
And anyone with a pulse -- never mind a Hollywood-obsessed one -- knows the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise has been a boon for Disney. Last September, the studio even announced a fourth installment, “On Stranger Tides,” set for a 2011 release with Depp still onboard as the main attraction.
