We Are All Jessica Chastain Rolling Our Eyes at Johnny Depp’s Lazy Acting Tricks

We’ve reached the point where we’re pretty damn tired of hearing about Johnny Depp. Most of us around these parts lost any interest in caring about him as a person or an actor after it was revealed that he allegedly abused his ex-wife Amber Heard. (And subsequently, put her through divorce settlement hell.)

Since then, I personally find myself in a kneejerk cringe whenever I see a Pirates of the Caribbean trailer, or hear a story about him mending his broken heart by buying an island chain or $30,000 worth of wine every month, or a giant $3 million cannon with which to launch Hunter S. Thompson’s ashes into the sky. (Yes, really.)

Those last few tidbits came from a counter-lawsuit Depp’s former managers have filed against him. (Depp is suing the management company for fraud. They’re counter-suing for “profligate spending.”) The lawsuit also chronicles Depp’s alleged poor work ethic and how his “excessive drinking, physical fights with [Amber] Heard and constant lateness on set” caused countless expensive delays on Pirates 5, sometimes causing hundreds of people–extras and crew members–to wait for him for hours at a time. A production assistant had to be “stationed outside Depp’s house in an unmarked car, charged with announcing when the star was finally awake.” That had to be someone’s job.

So the fact that Depp reportedly kept a sound engineer on retainer and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to feed him his dialogue “so that he no longer had to memorise his lines”–well, that’s just icing on this asshole cake.

Let’s all revel, then, in Jessica Chastain’s reaction to that bit of information. She clearly doesn’t want to be lumped in with this kind of “actor,” as indicated by this HIGHLY RELATABLE eye roll. (via the BBC interview above)

Sure memorization isn’t the easiest thing, but it’s step one of an actor’s job. By the managers’ accounts, this isn’t an issue of ability, it’s his “clear and epic” sense of entitlement. How frustrating do you think it must be for Chastain, who has spoken frequently and candidly about the struggles women and other marginalized groups face in the film industry, to think about this entitled, over-paid, overrated megastar not even bothering to learn his lines?

It’s probably way too late in the game for Depp to take a lesson from her acting technique, right?

ZING.

(H/T Rebecca Pahle on Twitter, image: screengrab)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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