Pirates get real lonely sometimes while sailing the high seas, and it’s only natural to expect some swabbing below decks. Still, Johnny Depp had more in mind when he crafted the character of Jack Sparrow for the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, an eccentric interpretation that gave Disney executives a conniption fit: “They couldn’t stand him,” he told Vanity Fair. “They just couldn’t stand him. I think it was Michael Eisner, the head of Disney at the time, who was quoted as saying, ‘He’s ruining the movie.’ Upper-echelon Disney-ites, going, What’s wrong with him? Is he, you know, like some kind of weird simpleton? Is he drunk? By the way, is he gay? … And so I actually told this woman who was the Disney-ite … ‘But didn’t you know that all my characters are gay?’ Which really made her nervous.” [VF]
