The movie Johnny Depp refused to watch: “I prefer to stay as ignorant as possible”

(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)

Fri 12 December 2025 22:30, UK

It’s easy to forget that before the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise skyrocketed him into superstardom, Johnny Depp was not a traditional leading man by any stretch of the imagination, as while his collaborations with Tim Burton had earned him a loyal fanbase, when looking at the strange artists he has cited as inspirations, it’s not hard to see why he was always considered to be an ‘unusual’ star.

The meticulous degree to which he has immersed himself in his roles means that looking back at his work can be difficult, as he doesn’t want to begin comparing his own performances.

This means that Depp hasn’t seen some of the best films he’s ever made, telling Parade that he hasn’t seen Public Enemies, the crime drama he starred in alongside Christian Bale and Marion Cotillard.

“I prefer to stay as ignorant as possible about my work and anybody else’s work in movies,” he claimed, “As much as I want to see what Michael Mann did with this film and what Christian and Marion put on the screen in their performances, it’ll probably be a while before I can bring myself to take a look at it because then I would start having regrets.”

Public Enemies was based on the true story of the notorious bank robbers who were hunted down by the FBI during the Great Depression of the 1930s, in which Depp was cast in the lead John Dillinger, with Bale as his archnemesis, FBI Agent Martin Pulvis. Where some may have expected the film to be a relentless, kinetic action thriller, it turned out to be just as subversive and philosophical as anything else that Mann had directed, but it was Depp’s involvement in the film that was most critical.

Mann was coming off a box office disappointment with his Miami Vice project, which collapsed financially, despite having earned a solid cult status. At the time, Depp had more power than at any other point in his career, having led the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy to becoming one of the biggest blockbuster franchises of all-time, and earned his third Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Actor’ due to his performance in the musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

As with Mann’s previous work on Miami Vice and Collateral, this film was shot using groundbreaking digital techniques that made the action and suspense feel more intimate than they would have otherwise, while serving as a reminder that Depp could be a sensitive, magnetic actor with a great talent for nuance, as he brought a sense of sadness and mystique to the role of Dillinger.

The feature also marked the end of one stage of Depp’s career, as he began leaning more into dramatically eccentric parts in the immediate aftermath. While it was impressive to see the radical physical transformations he underwent for Alice in Wonderland, Dark Shadows, The Lone Ranger, and Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, it felt like he had become a caricature of himself.

Now that the actor is gradually being re-accepted into the industry with a few mainstream films slated for release in 2026, he might find the time to actually watch Public Enemies and see everything that he did right instead.

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