Johnny Depp: An outlaw outlook

He certainly seems his sui-generis self at all times. He arrives for the interview dressed with addled panache in a fitted blue pinstripe vest, with a pressed green bandanna hanging just so out of his jeans pocket. His hair flops to the side like a '20s-style banker who neglected to slick back his locks, and he sports facial scruff where a more traditional beard might have grown. He comes across both courtly and fey, immediately apologizing for his slightly dazed, jet-lagged state.

After finishing "Rum Diary" in Puerto Rico, he flew to L.A. to pick up his "kiddies" (7-year-old son and 10-year-old daughter with longtime love Vanessa Paradis), accompanied them to France where they have a second home, then flew to Chicago for the first "Public Enemies" premiere, and then back to California for a second red-carpet screening at the Los Angeles Film Festival.

Sitting in a Beverly Hills hotel room, he recalls this itinerary with a voice that seems almost unrecognizable at first. He both drawls and plucks his words precisely, and it sounds as if the tenor was slightly aerated. It's strange to hear, because in the last decade or so, he's rarely used his actual speaking voice on film.

Depp has appeared in almost 50 movies, but for much of his early career -- the "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" portion -- he seemed like a bohemian artist, intensely wary of the major stardom that could easily be his given his natural on-screen charisma. More recently, he seems to have made peace with his mantle by embracing the medium's mythic and myth-making potential.

Depp hasn't played many ordinary citizens of late, jobbing in suburbia, grinding through everyday existence. He seems to prefer portraying an androgynous eye-lined pirate ("The Pirates of the Caribbean" trilogy), the slightly creepy candy impresario with the Prince Valiant haircut ("Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"), the dreamy, gentle creator of Peter Pan ("Finding Neverland"), and the Mad Hatter from the upcoming Tim Burton version of "Alice in Wonderland," a creature with tangerine orange eyebrows, hair that seems to jet propulsively out of his head, spooky lime-green eyes, and a hat that appears constructed out of feathers and lace.