Depp goes dark
Transformation to Whitey Bulger takes him far from fun-loving favorites
He’s getting critical acclaim and the movie isn’t out until Friday. He’s most definitely going to get awards consideration. He might even win his first Oscar.
Already, though, Black Mass star Johnny Depp has received his best reviews as real-life Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger. As the actor filmed a bar scene, a pal of Bulger’s sidled up to Depp’s friend Mark Mahoney (who has a minor role in the movie) and was “freaked out” by Depp’s appearance. And when Bulger’s lawyer Jay Carney stopped by the set, he told director Scott Cooper, “Johnny looks and sounds just like him. I didn’t expect this.”
In a career filled with transformations into indelible characters, from fun-loving pirates ( Pirates
of the Caribbean) to eccentric
chocolatiers ( Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory), Depp takes his darkest turn yet in Black Mass as Bulger, the Irish mobster who became a crime kingpin in Beantown.
Cooper was floored by Depp’s “emotional and psychological transformation from a man that I know to be kind and sweet and gentle to the man you see on screen who is cunning and chilling and cold. I don’t know if I’ve seen a personality transformation like that ever.”
The film is based on the 2001 book Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob by Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill, who covered Bulger’s saga for The Bos
ton Globe. In real life, the criminal’s presence loomed large in Boston until he went on the lam in 1994, making himself a home on the FBI’s most-wanted list for crimes including racketeering, narcotics distribution and 19 counts of murder.
Bulger finally was arrested four years ago and, now 86, is serving two consecutive life sentences plus five years.
In his portrayal of the infamous gangster, Depp had to walk a tightrope of being responsible to Bulger while also respecting the man’s victims.
“The language was violence, and survival within that business was violence,” Depp says. “If you didn’t have that edge, you’d lose your position. You’d just be gone and over with.”
And as violent as he was, Bulger wasn’t a one-dimensional villain, the actor says. Bulger also could be incredibly sensitive when it came to family and friends. “There was a loyalty to his associates,” Depp says, so much so that he believes the whole idea of Bulger as “the rat” was fabricated by the FBI “so that he had no sanctuary.”
To better portray the man, Depp requested an audience with Bulger, who “respectfully declined,” the actor says. “I expected denial.”
Still, there was surveillance footage that helped Depp master how Bulger moved. Plus, while Carney couldn’t tell him everything about his client, he was helpful in finding snippets of character, Depp says.
The “suit of armor” that Depp had as Bulger — prosthetics, makeup, wardrobe and teeth to capture his look — helped in his performance, though it wasn’t until he put in the hand-painted blue contacts that “I could see the full character.”
Those lenses were key, Cooper says. “(Bulger’s) eyes were so piercingly blue and crystalline that people would have a difficult time maintaining eye contact with him because they’d just peer through your soul.”
Though Depp would have wanted to play Bulger 10 years ago, he says he wouldn’t have been ready. “I don’t know if I would have been able to quite grasp all the layers that make up the man. ... Also, 10 years ago, my real focus was on just playing characters who were as irreverent as possible.”
He recalls deciding that, after his 2004 English period piece
The Libertine was dumped in theaters with no promotional effort, “all I wanted to do from then on is comedy. Nothing too heavy.”
So is Black Mass the start of a heavier Depp? It depends, he says. The actor recalls reading scripts for The Road and The
Lovely Bones — dramas both having to do with children in danger or dead — and as a father, “there was no way. I would not and could not travel there.”
Depp just wants to continue playing the characters who feel right for him at the time, because that works out all right for him, he figures. “But we can’t forget that I’ve succeeded on 20 years of failures, essentially,” he says.
“Maybe what I’m doing is completely wrong, but it’s my instincts, therefore it’s organic and it’s real.”