In the winter of 1989, Johnny Depp was in Vancouver filming a television show. For the actor it was a very difficult situation.

Bound by a contract, he worked effortlessly and halfheartedly on a series called Special Command that had a highly unlikely plot: undercover cops at a high school.

One night and after finishing a day of recordings where he felt more trapped and bored than other times, he began to think about his options. He wrote them on a piece of paper.

The first was to “bear the matter as best I could and pray for as little erosion as possible.” The second was to “get me fired as quickly as possible and suffer as little erosion as possible.” The third and most drastic: “Resign and be sued and lose not only my money but that of my children and that of my children’s children.”

Faced with such a dilemma, he smiled, a little annoyed, but above all he perceived himself in a trap of destiny.

He reread his options and settled on the first. He felt that decision carried the germ of the destruction of his future. He imagined that he would be summoned just to participate in Chips-style projects, the furious series of the moment that narrated the adventures of two motorized patrol agents.

Many directors have actors that they work with continuously. Tim Burton and Johnny Depp became one of those inseparable combos. “I had become a teen idol consumed by young Republicans. I was a plastic poster.”

Without a project to help him wake up from work lethargy, one day – which turned out to be a good day – his agent sent him a script to read. It told the story of a boy with scissors for hands named Edward Scissorhands.

Intrigued, he began to read, already from the third page he felt that happiness that catches you when you are before an extraordinary story.

Those stories where you beg for time to stop and you look for a way not to move forward with the reading because it implies that the story will end and with that the magical world in which you were living will end.

The final page found him crying “like a newborn and unable to believe that there was someone so brilliant as to have written such a thing.”

As delighted as he was excited about the project, he began working to be Edward. He decided to document himself, looked at the plates of Gray’s Anatomy – the 19th century book considered the bible of anatomy – and delved into texts on child psychology. From there he moved on to the classic fairy tales… He read, compared and stopped to assess his career, then he understood the inevitable. “I was one of those teen TV actors. No director in their right mind would hire me for such a leading role.”

Still, his agent arranged an interview. She would meet Tim Burton and since he wanted to make a good impression on her, she prepared herself.

Although he knew something about his life, he decided to find out more. He investigated and learned that the director’s first job was as an animation apprentice at Disney, but that at the time he resigned because the studio never managed to understand his designs.

His universe began to be known with the micro-story for children Vincent. In 1984 he released Frankenweenie, a Frankenstein-inspired short film that chronicled a boy’s efforts to revive his dog after it was hit by a car.

Upon meeting Depp, Burton had finished premiering Batman, with Michael Keaton as the lead and Jack Nicholson as the Joker.

Despite how lurid the subject seemed, he transformed the horror story into one of love and tenderness. The great adventure of Pee Wee followed and then Beetlejuice where a young girl with brown eyes and a bright smile appeared: Winona Ryder.

Burton had just filmed Batman, with Michael Keaton as the lead and Jack Nicholson as the Joker, and the world was surrendering to the talent of this director who created characters who lived in the shadows and dreamed of twisting their destiny.

Stories with a gothic aesthetic but that were captivating due to their hopeful despair. Burton himself seemed like a character out of his movies. Tall, lanky, always dressed in black, badly shaven and never combed his hair, he assured that he was passionate about people “that he goes through many experiences and remains faithful”.

In awe of Burton’s talent, Depp thought what he didn’t want to think: he would never get the part. Lost for lost at least he wouldn’t miss the opportunity to meet the headmaster. He flew to Los Angeles.

The date was not in an imposing study or in a soulless office but in a hotel cafeteria. As soon as he got there I began to look where Burton was.

In times without a website, I only had a vague memory of a photo in the newspapers. She watched a couple chatting, a young man in a suit yawning bored while he read the newspaper and another, neat-looking, poured himself a coffee.

At a table not very visible but not hidden, he discovered a pale and frail-looking man with hair that expressed much more than a simple duel with the pillow. He was Burton. Deep came over, introduced himself, sat down.

“I couldn’t stop looking at his hair as I listened to him. Then the truth hit me like a two-ton sledgehammer to the center of the forehead. Her hands the way she moved them in the air and without control, her fingers tapping, nervously, the surface of the table and those eyes that seemed to look at everything from nowhere and with a devouring curiosity. This hypersensitive nut was Edward Scissorhands.”

They began to chat like strangers who know each other best. They shared four pots of coffee, completed the unfinished sentences and ideas and said goodbye with a “nice to have met you” and a handshake.

“I felt even worse than before and I left the place fully accelerated by caffeine and biting the spoon like a mad dog. Having felt so connected to Burton made me suffer even more. We had both understood the perversion implicit in the pitcher of cream, the glossy fascination with plastic grapes, the complexity and raw power of one of those microstory portraits on velvet, the profound respect for ‘those who are not like others’”.

Depp had been told that several famous artists, including Michael Jackson, were being considered for the character.

It had been sent to Tom Cruise but the handsome actor who was beginning to stomp replied that he would only agree to do it “as long as the hero finally grows his hands and becomes cute”.

In the face of so much competition, Depp thought that the only thing he had going for him was the belief that, by working together, he could translate Tim’s artistic vision into the character of Edward. “Would Tim have seen something in me that made him take chances? I was hoping he would.”

Johnny Depp has 26 tattoos spread throughout his body

He waited at his house. He answered every call, opened every letter and even called his agent more than usual, but nothing happened. Questions piled up and answers lacked. When he had already resigned himself to his fate as a poster actor, the phone rang and a voice announced: “Johnny… You are Edward Scissorhands”.

“I hung up the phone and repeated those words to myself. And again. And I began to repeat them to everyone I came across. I could not believe it. Burton was willing to take a chance. Ignoring the studio – which wanted a big star – Burton had chosen me. I instantly became a religious person: I was convinced that a divine intervention had taken place. This role did not mean an advance in my career for me. This role was freedom. Freedom to create, experiment, learn and exorcise something that I carried deep inside of me”.

Depp felt rescued from the world of mass products by this strange and brilliant man who had spent his adolescence making weird drawings and feeling like a Martian.

“It is very difficult to write about a person who is appreciated and respected and feels so close. I will only say that Tim rescued me, and that he only needs to say a few disconnected words, tilt his head, narrow his eyes and give me one of those looks so that I know what he wants from me in a certain scene, and that he always You will get from me the best I have to give.”

This is how the director with uncombed hair and the young man with a strange face and perfect cheekbones began a creative duo that brought to the screen the rarest and most unforgettable creatures of cinema in recent decades.

Whether in darker or more colorful roles, in movies with original scripts or adaptations, the duo managed to give us a fascinating universe where what the other perceives as monstrous is actually a being in as much pain as any being. human.

They started with Scissorhands and went on to other unforgettable stories like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Ed Wood, Corpse Bride, Mystery of the Headless Horseman, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Alice in Wonderland. Wonderland and Dark Shadows.

After Scissorhands, Depp’s fame skyrocketed. The actor who remembered that “I can’t say that my childhood was perfect, if I did something wrong, they beat me, if not, too” became the object of desire of directors and followers. He dated the most beautiful women of his time like Kate Moss and Winona Ryder and married Vanessa Paradis.

He starred in great movies and great clunkers. He got 26 tattoos and changed one: the famous Winona Ryder transformed it into Wino Forever. He entered the Guinness Book of Records as the highest paid actor in cinema, with 75 million dollars per film. He was nominated three times for an Oscar and three times he lost it.

He stoned his fortune in eccentric luxuries such as an island of his own in the Bahamas and a vineyard estate in the south of France. In recent times, she was in the news of her conflicting divorce and trial against her ex Amber Heard of her who accused him of abuse and then he took her to the stand for defamation. Given the complaints of domestic violence, the producers of Pirates of the Caribbean 6 decided to lower their thumbs and removed him from the cast.

Then the loss of Fantastic Animals: the secrets of Dumbledore would be added. Hollywood turned its back on him and it seemed that his future would be to stay alone and disowned in a mansion like Edward. And then that person appeared who rescues you to keep walking.

Tim Burton, Vincent Price and Johnny Depp on the set of ‘Edward Scissorhands’ 20th Century Fox (1990)

Burton announced that he had plans to make Beetlejuice 2 and that he wanted to bring in Depp. The director showed that he was still that different type that even the powerful producers respected, but above all, the type that just as 30 years ago had been encouraged to fight for a Depp as talented as he was unknown, now he was fighting for a talented actor, overwhelmed, questioned. but always friend.

Whenever he can or is asked, Depp makes his opinion of Burton clear. “He is an artsy, cool, wacky, insane, brilliant, brave, hysterically funny, loyal, non-conformist, honest friend. I owe him something impossible to be repaid and I respect him more than I can ever express in writing. I’ve never met anyone so obviously out of place who fits better anywhere, and always in his own way. He is him and that’s all. And he’s also, hands down, the best Sammy Davis Jr. impersonator on the planet. In short: I owe most of the success I’ve ever had to Tim Burton.”

Depp says he doesn’t care what movie Tim decides to shoot. If he needs it, he will be there. “I blindly trust him, his vision, his taste, his sense of humor, his heart and his brain.

Tim is for me a true genius and I do not attribute such a word to many people, you can believe me. You can’t label or define what he does. It’s not magic, because that would involve some kind of trick.

It’s not skill, because it doesn’t seem to be something he’s learned. What Tim has is a very special gift, something you don’t see every day. It is not enough to consider him a simple and great film director. Therefore, the rare title of “genius” suits him better.”

The writer Rodrigo Fresán once wrote that “there are good actors who have the good fortune to one day meet a good director who uses them, defines them and gives them a reason for being. Or maybe it’s the other way around: maybe it’s the director who finds the actor. And that happened to Johnny Depp with Tim Burton and Tim Burton with Johnny Depp”. We cannot help but fully agree.

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