Scarf-less and accent-free: 8 times Johnny Depp played an ordinary human being

The English-language debut of Florian Henckel Von Donnersmarck (The Lives Of Others), a soufflé-light travelogue thriller, isn’t the fiasco it’s often painted as, though one could argue that the movie’s casting of Johnny Depp as a clueless, e-cig-sucking everyman is somewhat undermined by the decision to give him a little too much smoky eye. Depp plays a vacationing American who gets dragged into some Euro intrigue by a femme fatale (Angelina Jolie, speaking in a Brit accent that’s a little hard on the ears). The movie’s big twist ending doesn’t really cancel out the pleasure of watching Depp keep it simple as an ordinary man in exceedingly cartoonish circumstances; however, his performance isn’t what you’d call awards material, and the movie’s Golden Globe nominations—including ones for Depp and Jolie—will forever be remembered as a stain on the otherwise sterling reputation of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]

Johnny Depp hasn’t done a lot of “everyman” roles in his career; he’s far too special a flower for that. But the conceit of 1995’s Nick Of Time didn’t allow for too crazy a lead character, and since Christopher Walken plays the villain, there’s already more than enough hamming-it-up to go around. In the real-time thriller, Depp plays regular dad Gene Watson—even the name is boring—who’s presented with a big choice: He must assassinate the governor of California or his daughter will be murdered. Depp, in tasteful glasses and a relatively rumple-free suit, is billed as “an ordinary man” in the trailer, and his performance is simple and handsome—exactly what the movie called for. [Josh Modell]

You might argue that Johnny Depp isn’t exactly normal in his role as Joe Pistone/Donnie Brasco. He’s so damn good at going undercover with the mob that he’s almost like a superspy, willing to yell “It’s a FUGAZI” right in a guy’s face in order to prove his mettle to Al Pacino. But Depp is pretty down to earth throughout the film, perhaps because the character he played is based on a real-life FBI agent. So while he may be fast on his feet, he’s not basing his performance on Keith Richards or some other mythical figure—he’s just playing a law-enforcement offer with a slightly blurred sense of where the line is. [Josh Modell]

Jim Jarmusch’s guitar-feedback-drenched, black-and-white transcendental Western has plenty of strange sights—Iggy Pop in a dress, Billy Bob Thornton as a mountain man, Crispin Glover as a train fireman who seems to have wandered in from a David Lynch-directed Herman Melville adaptation—but Johnny Depp isn’t one of them. Despite sharing his name with a visionary poet and wearing the kind of hat-and-make-up combo that distinguishes the star’s most eccentric performances, Depp’s William Blake functions as the closest thing the movie has to an audience surrogate: a meek wanderer experiencing death and resurrection as he passes through Jarmusch’s funny, post-modern vision of the American West. [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]

Depp lived in France throughout the 2000s, and during that time he apparently got close with actor-director Yvan Attal, the star of Anthony Zimmer, the movie that provided the basis for The Tourist. He even pops up for two scenes in Attal’s battle-of-the-sexes riff , playing a handsome American expat whom Gabrielle (Attal’s real-life partner, Charlotte Gainsbourg) first encounters at a Virgin Megastore listening station. Depp has had his oddball extended cameos, but this one is memorable for how naturalistic it is, with Depp’s bumbling charm playing against Attal’s on-the-nose soundtrack choices. [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]