Johnny Depp: Actors Who Start Bands ‘Make Me Sick’
Johnny Depp called out actors trying to piggyback their fame into musical careers, telling reporters in Berlin, “That whole idea for me is a sickening thing, it’s always just made me sick,” the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
Depp — who was promoting his upcoming film Mortdecai — periodically moonlights as a guitarist, playing both live and in the studio with a number of high-profile acts. And while the actor said he was grateful for those opportunities, and that he would continue to play, he promised he wouldn’t be forming The Johnny Depp Band anytime soon.
“The luxury now is, anybody with a certain amount of of success, if you have a musical being, you can go out and start a band and capitalize on your work in other areas,” Depp said. “But I hate the idea, ‘Come see me play the guitar because you’ve seen me in 12 movies.’ It shouldn’t be [that way]. You want the people who are listening to the music to only be interested in the music.”
Depp’s comments come on the heels of a particularly musical year. In 2014, the actor joined Aerosmith on stage, jammed with Paul McCartney, noodled with Willie Nelson, covered Danzig with Ryan Adams and joined Marilyn Manson and Die Antwoord’s Ninja for “The Beautiful People” during a Halloween concert in Los Angeles. Depp also joined Butch Walker in the studio and contributed a solo to T-Bone Burnett’s “lost” Bob Dylan lyrics project, Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes, when Elvis Costello had to miss a recording session.
But true to his words, the actor hasn’t completely forsaken his day job to spend more time shredding. Mortdecai, which finds Depp playing an eccentric art dealer on the hunt for a stolen painting, opens January 23rd. The actor can currently be seen playing the Wolf in the recent film adaptation of Into the Woods.