Sketch o’the Week

Not a very ambitious sketch this week, as I am currently swamped with work. Here’s a very quick and tiny study of actor Johnny Depp. This took me about 5 to 10 minutes. Not the most successful drawing.

I’ve always admired Depp as an actor, not just for his performances but for his refusal to ride his good looks to success. I was in college when “21 Jump Street” was on TV, and Depp was catapulted to stardom and teenybopper heartthrob royalty via that show. It would have been easy to take empty but glamorous roles where his looks were as big a part of his appeal as his acting. He instead accpeted roles that downplayed or completely negated his looks. Not all of them were successful but they were daring. He reminds me of Jack Nicholson in his attitude toward film making. When asked why he accepted roles in films that were not considered “Oscar worthy”, Nicholson was once quoted as saying (and I am paraphrasing here) “because I’m an actor. Actors act.” In other words they don’t wait around for the perfect role, they seek out good roles but they keep working. Depp has been in everything from arthouse independents to dramas to thrillers to popcorn adventures, and he seems to put forth his all in every role. You have to admire that, even if you don’t like some of his movies.

Huh. It almost took longer to write that paragraph than it did to do the sketch. Back to work…