It seemed like a stroke of left-field casting genius. A big screen version of the Sweeney with an erstwhile cock-ernee pirate in the title role.
Johnny Depp is Jack Regan, the kipper-tied copper, bedding birds, boozing with Carter and mowing down the bad lads in his Ford Consul GT with a growl of "You're nicked you slaaag!".
Sadly it was but a cinematic pipe dream. Professional geezer Ray Winstone is apparently "in talks" to play Regan for the yet to be made film, while the chameleon-like Depp in fact stars as the cut throat barber that spawned the rhyming slang - Sweeney Todd.
 Intriguingly this was role that Winstone essayed on television two years ago. However, Depp stars in the musical version adapted from the Stephen Sondheim's Grand Guignol melodrama. The film, for which Depp has already picked up a Golden Globe, sees him reuniting once more with director and best friend Tim Burton, as well as Tim's partner, Helena Bonham Carter, whom he played opposite in Burton's Corpse Bride and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
The results are so gorily violent - as throats are slashed and brains pounded out of skulls - that it is one of the few movie musicals to be given an 18 certificate. However, more terrifying for the softly spoken, Kentucky-born actor, was the prospect that he would have to sing. Despite having his own band, The Kids, before turning to acting, Depp had always hidden behind the shield of his guitar.
"I was the guy who would come in and sing the harmony very quickly," he says. "It would be all of like three seconds and then I was out. I would find my way back to the dark and continue playing. "I actually did do a musical many years ago with John Waters called Cry-Baby, but technically it was only half me - it wasn't me singing. Tim's the only person brave enough to actually let me try. I'd never even sung in the shower, too mortified." He plucked up sufficient courage to go into the studio with a former bandmate, Bruce Witkin, to record a version of My Friends, where Sweeney serenades his blades. "That was the first song I ever sang in my life. It was pretty weird and scary. I said 'give me the bad news' and he said 'the bad news is you are going to have to do this'." Depp displays a pretty impressive set of pipes. But, as he is not an actor to - with the exception of pirate movies - dip into the same genre waters twice, he says this will be his only musical. "Once I got over the initial fear it was kind of enjoyable. Sondheim's melodies and lyrics are a real pleasure to tromp around in. Would I ever do it again? No, I doubt it." This feeling was probably reinforced by the fact Depp assumed that when the cameras were rolling he would be lip-synching to songs he had recorded in the privacy of a studio. "In fact the only way to do it is to belt it out once again on set, which is extremely mortifying. Everyone's very very close and you just feel like an idiot." Depp is an amiable though reluctant star. He deflects probing questions during interviews and constantly retreats behind his hands, running them through his hair and touching his knuckles to the bridge of his nose. Yet afterwards he is big-hearted enough to spend time signing autographs for journalists whose professionalism seems to have melted in the face of a combination of good manners and soulful brown eyes. And this selflessness is no act. He reportedly donated a million pounds to Great Ormond Street recently to thank them for saving his daughter Lily-Rose's life when she suffered kidney failure last year. The eight-year-old was treated there after contracting E.coli when Depp and his family were living in Surrey while he was filming Sweeney Todd. Not content with just handing over the cheque, he also paid a secret visit and spent several hours reading bedtime stories to the young patients. At 44, the undeniably beautiful Depp seems untouched by time. Yet both on and off screen he disguises himself behind bizarre characters and unusual stylistic choices - part Captain Jack Sparrow, part Big Issue seller. Today, by Deppian standards, he has scrubbed up. His hair and goatee are neatly trimmed and a natural dark brown. Rings and bracelets are kept to a minimum and he has even taken off his beloved fedora. But on screen he is, once more, just a step away from a freak show. Sweeney and his (human) pie making partner in crime, Mrs Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), are bathed in shadows. Their pallor is corpse-like and their eyes ringed black, as if they haven't slept in a lifetime. The finishing touch is an Elsa Lanchester streak of white through Sweeney's dishevelled hair. Though he displays considerably more competency with a blade than he did when playing the unfortunate Edward Scissorhands, Depp says that killing people with them "was the easy part. "The most difficult was lathering them up and shaving them, that's what freaked me out most. I have shaved a grown man before though, and he is still alive and walking round to this day." There is some debate as to whether Sweeney truly existed, but his legend grew through the tabloid press and Penny Dreadfuls of the 18th and 19th centuries. He was reputedly born into poverty in 1748 and imprisoned as a teenager for petty robbery before turning to barbaric barbery, killing customers to steal from them and to feed his psychopathic rage. His crimes were discovered when the stench of the skin and bones he hid in church catacombs overpowered even the everyday stink of old London. The rest of the evidence had been consumed by Mrs Lovett's pie-eating patrons. She committed suicide while he was tried and hanged for murdering, it is alleged, in excess of 160 people. In the film based on Sondheim's musical, which in turn was inspired by a Christopher Bond play, Sweeney is a happy family man whose wife and child are taken from him by a corrupt judge after he is transported on trumped up charges. Years later he returns to seek his bloody revenge and soon the cobbles are running with claret. "Sweeney's obviously a dark figure but I think quite sensitive. He has experienced something very traumatic in his life, a grave injustice." says Depp. "I always saw him as a victim. I mean, anyone who is victimised to that degree and then turns around and becomes a murderer can't be all there. Not dumb, just a half-step behind. "The rug was pulled out from under his perfect world and he was in a 15 year hell hole. The only reason he came back was to eliminate the people who had done him wrong. "I am a big fan of revenge. It's a feeling that most people don't want to admit to but I think we all have it secretly in there." Depp is joined on screen by half the senior cast of the Harry Potter films including Helena, Alan Rickman, who plays the lecherous judge, and Timothy Spall, who acts as the judge's henchman. He was also, given his well-publicised love of British comedy, delighted to get the chance to work alongside Sacha Baron Cohen, who is a flamboyant rival barber with a big secret. "Sacha is someone I'd admired greatly for a number of years, all the way back to Ali G. It's like meeting the new Peter Sellers. He's clearly an incredibly gifted actor." Depp's all time comedy hero remains Paul Whitehouse and the actor's Fast Show appearance, as a customer wanting a suit from the sexually explicit tailors (Whitehouse and Mark Williams), remains a TV moment to treasure. "The Fast Show was, in my opinion, one of the most brilliant things I had ever seen in television, theatre, whatever," he confesses. "So when it was mentioned as a possibility (of him appearing) I actively pursued it. I stalked Paul Whitehouse, I was sitting in a tree outside his bedroom window with a funny mask on, that is how I got the job basically." With his empathetic relationship with Burton still reaping such rich cinematic rewards, Depp is unlikely to ever want for work. The only question is where will the two jump next? "Every time Johnny and I work together we try to do something different, we always want to stretch ourselves," says Burton. "We never just want to feel like 'Okay, that was easy'." We have been warned. | 
