You’re unlikely to see anything more embarrassing this week than Johnny Depp and Amber Heard’s video apology to the Australian government for providing a false immigration document when they brought their two Yorkshire terriers into the country.
It got us thinking that Depp, 52, should take this further and go on an apology tour to express remorse for a whole host of other mishaps that have turned what was once the coolest leading man in Hollywood to a walking punchline.
AMERICA:
Having said sorry to Australia, Depp should now apologize to America for his remarks about his country to German magazine Stern in 2003. Quite apart from mangling metaphors, Depp’s insight is up there with the most ridiculous observation about the U.S. that any celebrity has ever made.
Depp said: “America is dumb, it’s like a dumb puppy that has big teeth that can bite and hurt you, aggressive. My daughter is four, my boy is one. I’d like them to see America as a toy, a broken toy. Investigate it a little, check it out, get this feeling and then get out.”
Far from getting out of America, following his split with singer Vanessa Paradis, several years later Depp returned to his homeland because he got fed up with paying so much tax in France. “I’m certainly not ready to give up my American citizenship,” he pronounced.
ROGER DALTREY:
Depp definitely owes The Who founder Roger Daltrey an apology. In 1994 he was staying in New York’s The Mark Hotel with then-girlfriend Kate Moss and trashed his room. But the ferocity and commotion was too much even for a ’60s rock legend, and Daltrey complained to hotel management. To make matters worse, Depp’s excuse was that an armadillo had leapt out of his closet. Daltrey hasn’t forgotten the episode. “When they trashed that hotel room, bloody hell they made a racket!” he said last year. “We could have done the same in a fraction of the time.”
ROALD DAHL:
Depp’s long-time collaborations with Tim Burton can reap dividends as demonstrated by “Edward Scissorhands” and “Ed Wood.” But when he played Willy Wonka in Burton’s take on Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” he turned Dahl’s iconic eccentric into an immature creep, who, as many at the time took great delight in noting, bore a resemblance to Michael Jackson.
RECENT CAREER CHOICES:
Depp’s weird and wonderful career has descended into embarrassment in recent years. The filming locations have been exotic but the critical and commercial reception for the movies has been excruciatingly bad (“The Tourist” in Venice, “Mortdecai” in London, “Transcendence” in Albuquerque.) Depp’s take on Whitey Bulger in “Black Mass” marked something of a return to form but he needs to issue an apology for the disastrous remake of “The Lone Ranger” alone.
PHOTOGRAPHERS:
Depp bizarrely told Vanity Fair in October 2011 about photo shoots: “Well, you just feel like you’re being raped somehow. Raped…it feels like a kind of weird—just weird, man.” To be fair, he already did actually issue an apology for his inappropriateness saying, “I am truly sorry for offending anyone in any way. I never meant to.”
WINONA RYDER:
The break-up between Depp and Winona Ryder in the early ’90s was a painful Young Hollywood split, and was reputedly instigated by her, not him. Still did Depp really have to change the tattoo on his upper right arm from “Winona Forever” to “Wino Forever”?
LEONARDO DICAPRIO:
Far from mentoring a then-19-year-old Leonardo DiCaprio when the pair filmed 1994 film “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” Depp told the Santa Barbara Film Festival last year that he made life hell for him. Depp confessed, “I tortured him. I really did. He was always talking about these videos games, you know? I told you, it was kind of a dark period.”
KEITH RICHARDS:
When Depp initially channeled Keith Richards playing Jack Sparrow in “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” in 2003, Disney should have apologized to him since producers wanted to fire him during the first month and the franchise went on to be a stellar success. But lately Depp has gone too far with his man crush on the Rolling Stone guitarist. His disheveled, shambolic appearance at the Grammy’s in February with his band Hollywood Vampires was his latest attempt at identity theft of Richards, for which Depp should apologize to his old friend.
