Did Johnny Depp stand up for Patricia Arquette? (Photo Credit – Wikipedia)
Advertisement
The name Johnny Depp drips with drama almost as reliably as it does with box office gold. Every now and then, controversy seems to follow him like a shadow, long before and far beyond the chaos with Amber Heard.
Legal troubles have peppered his past as well, with flashes of aggression, scuffles with paparazzi and arrests that kept tabloids fed. As recently as January 2024, he faced new heat when Lola Glaudini claimed he verbally assaulted her while filming Blow, reigniting the question of who the real Depp is behind the makeup and movie magic.
Captain Jack with a Conscience
But for every sordid headline, there’s a softer counterpoint that scrambles the narrative. This same man who’s tangled with police and courts has also lent his voice, literally, to causes that reach far beyond the red carpet. In 2008, when a teenage fan named Sophie Wilkinson lay comatose after a brutal car crash, Depp didn’t just send flowers, he recorded voice messages in character as Captain Jack Sparrow.
Some accounts even claim those strange, slurred snippets helped spark her first movement in months, and eventually led to her returning home.
Backstage Shadows on Ed Wood
Then there’s the Ed Wood shoot, a black-and-white tribute to cinema’s strangest underdog, and the second of many Depp-Burton collaborations.
While Depp was busy channeling the titular eccentric, things behind the scenes took a darker turn. Patricia Arquette, cast as Wood’s love interest, found herself the target of relentless psychological torment from an unhinged extra on the movie set.
“She would turn to me and say, ‘I’m going to kill myself because of you.’ Then they’d say, ‘Rolling!’ and she’d stop,” she said, via Showbiz Cheat Sheet. I was in a very perilous mental state with this constant mental assault.”
Arquette, surprisingly got a lifeline from Depp, who quietly confronted the woman and shut the situation down with surprising composure. “Johnny went up to her and said, ‘Hey, listen, she hasn’t done anything to you, you have no right to spew that stuff out at her,’” Arquette continued. “He was very chivalrous. He has a really calming effect on people. He completely stabilised her insanity.”
Arquette, who has known Depp since their wild, pre-fame youth, insists nothing romantic ever happened between them but their bond was real.
“The first time I remember hanging out with him was at the parking lot of Canter’s drinking beers,” she recalled. “Then we went over to the supermarket and I remember him pushing me around in a shopping cart, and I had a little strainer on my head.”
They both owe early career breaks to A Nightmare on Elm Street, with Depp in the original and her in the third installment.
