The horse could’ve crushed me in a second, so I was very lucky that the horse’s instincts were very good. Incredibly, the horse lifted his front legs and he missed me. Like an idiot, I was trying to get back up! At a certain point, I had to make a decision: do I go down and hit the deck on my own or do I wait for a hoof to split my face in two?ĭepp: I chose to fall on my own. The horse has incredibly muscular front legs that were moving at a very dangerous speed, but I held on to the mane. You’d expect to be riddled with fear or adrenaline, but it just happened and I saw everything very clearly. Q: What went through your mind when you fell?ĭepp: It happened very fast and very slow. I don’t know if it was user error or what, but we fell. We’d been working on the horses a lot that day when we decided to jump over a couple of obstacles. Q: What can you tell us about the horseback incident that happened during the film shoot?ĭepp: I’m not sure it was an accident I think the horse had it in for me. I’ll wear a bandana over my head and I’ll look like a weathered roadie! I’ll glue on a fake nose and a ZZ Top beard. I’ve worn ridiculous things to be able to go out in public. Q: Have you ever worn a mask – like the Lone Ranger – to visit places without being recognized?ĭepp: I have actually. They break the rules, so there is that vicarious thrill in playing one.
Q: How much fun did you have playing an outlaw alongside Armie?ĭepp: Outlaws are fun. I found him a dream to work with and I feel like I’ve made a really good friend in Armie. He fully committed to this role he played it perfectly, he got the humor, and he didn’t want to play it as the ‘cool guy’ as it were.
The lone ranger johnny depp movie#
Armie is a young actor coming up the ranks and he looks like a classic movie star – and what’s more, he has the chops to back it up. He committed to playing the Lone Ranger as an earnest, naïve, ‘white man’ – and that’s exactly right. He’s very smart, very quick and very clever and he’s super-talented. Q: What makes actor Armie Hammer perfect for the role of the Lone Ranger?ĭepp: First and foremost, Armie is a great guy. One day, I got a call saying that a woman named Ladonna Harris – a very strong activist – had decided she wanted to adopt me into her family and into the Comanche Nation, which will always be the greatest honor that I’ve ever been given. We all ended up having great relationships with them. Q: How would you describe your experience of working alongside Native Americans on The Lone Ranger ?ĭepp: The production was blessed by the Navaho and the Comanche, and we were treated incredibly by these wonderful, generous people. It’s my small sliver of a contribution to try and right the wrongs that have been committed in the past. I didn’t want the Lone Ranger to say to him, “Go fetch me a soda, boy.” Instead, I wanted to portray him as a warrior and as a man with great integrity and dignity. I didn’t want to play this character as the sidekick to the Lone Ranger. For the most part, they’ve been depicted as savages, or whatever terms they’ve used to describe them. For however long cinema’s been around, Native Americans have been treated very poorly by Hollywood. Q: How do you make an iconic character like Tonto relative to today?ĭepp: I think he’s very relevant. It wasn’t comfortable and I looked funny, but it was worth it… I think. That happened quite often because it would save time the next morning. I was in makeup for a couple of hours every day, unless I decided to wear it home.
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Once you start to replace your own skin with that of the character and the costume, you start to see that this man has been through quite a lot. Q: How important is the makeup when you’re working on a character like this?ĭepp: The makeup is everything really. It wasn’t, but I then decided that the best thing to do was to take a dead bird and put it on top of Tonto’s head. At first glance, I thought the crow was on the warrior’s head. The stripes were slightly different than the stripes we used for Tonto, but what caught my attention was the fact that there was a crow flying in the painting, just behind the warrior. Q: How did you come up with iconic the look of Tonto in your new movie?ĭepp: The inspiration came from a painting I saw of a warrior with stripes down his face. We wanted to give audiences around the world a big, expansive experience that’s a great piece of entertainment. It’s a big adventure film that has really nice themes in it, and it’s a lot of fun to watch. It’s written by great writers, and it’s directed by a great director. Q: How would you describe your new take on The Lone Ranger with Jerry Bruckheimer and Gore Verbinski?ĭepp: The Lone Ranger is a well-told story populated with great actors.