HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Count Johnny Depp among Angelina Jolie's massive fan base after the two worked together on the upcoming film The Tourist.
"Meeting her and getting to know her was a real pleasant surprise," the 47-year-old star tells rocker Patty Smith in an interview for Vanity Fair. "You don't know what she might be like—if she has any sense of humor at all. I was so pleased to find that she is incredibly normal, and has a wonderfully kind of dark, perverse sense of humor."
In fact, Depp says Jolie actually reminds him of another Hollywood icon.
"I've had the honor and the pleasure and gift of having known Elizabeth Taylor for a number of years," he tells Smith. "You know, you sit down with her, she slings hash, she sits there and cusses like a sailor, and she's hilarious. Angie's got the same kind of thing, you know, the same approach."
While he enjoyed getting to know his co-star, Depp admits it wasn't always easy.
"Poor thing, dogged by paparazzi, her and her husband, Brad [Pitt] …all their kids," he says of the media attention surrounding Jolie and company. "There are times when you see how ridiculous is this life, how ludicrous it is, you know, leaving your house every morning and being followed by paparazzi."
The actor also reflects on the reaction he got from Disney executives when they first saw his Jack Sparrow character from the blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise.
"They couldn't stand him. They just couldn't stand him," he recalls. "I think it was Michael Eisner, the head of Disney at the time, who was quoted as saying, 'He's ruining the movie.'
"Upper-echelon Disney-ites, going, What's wrong with him? Is he, you know, like some kind of weird simpleton? Is he drunk? By the way, is he gay?… And so I actually told this woman who was the Disney-ite… 'But didn't you know that all my characters are gay?' Which really made her nervous."
Depp also admits that he always wanted to be a rock star.
"Going into acting was an odd deviation from a particular road that I was on in my late teens, early 20s, because I had no desire, no interest, really, in it at all," he says. "I was a musician and I was a guitarist, and that's what I wanted to do."
Also see: Johnny Depp Photos
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