Johnny Depp’s 10 Best Performances

3) Ed Wood

Four years following their success with Edward Scissorhands, Depp and Burton reunited to make Ed Wood, a wonderfully strange little movie about a wonderfully strange little figure in movie history. It’s a hard movie to pin down. It’s a comedy, but the type that’s more strange than laugh-out-loud funny. It’s a celebration of a man who is generally agreed upon as the worst filmmaker of all time, real life director Ed Wood, whose titles include Glen or Glenda and Plan 9 from Outer Space. And just to add to his general eccentricity and bizarre cinematic sensibilities, he was notorious for being a cross-dresser.

This might be Johnny Depp’s best performance of his career, and it’s nearly indescribable. He makes it utterly impossible to determine whether Wood really was as oblivious and optimistic as he seemed or if he was on to his own game, similar to the debate/non-debate surrounding Tommy Wiseau. It’s most likely that he was just a man who loved movies, and as he states in the movie, would do just about anything to continue to make movies, even though he was terrrrrrrible at it. Like just legendary ineptitude. But so damn cheerful about it.

The moment that sold Depp’s portrayal as entirely brilliant is the scene where he gets baptized. You’ll never see someone so genuinely enthusiastic sound so drippingly sarcastic ever again.