Johnny Depp Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Johnny Depp trivia questions with answers. Johnny Depp dropped out of high school at 16 to play guitar, fell into acting by accident on A Nightmare on Elm Street, spent the nineties dodging his own teen-idol image in films like Cry-Baby, Ed Wood and Dead Man, then became the biggest star in the world as a pirate modelled on Keith Richards and a cartoon skunk. This quiz follows the whole arc: the Kentucky childhood, The Kids, 21 Jump Street, the eight Tim Burton films, three Oscar nominations, the Viper Room, Hollywood Vampires, the marriages and tattoos, the UK libel loss, the Virginia verdict, and the Cannes comeback as Louis XV. Easy questions ask who he modelled Jack Sparrow on and what he voices in Rango; the hard end wants the Peter Lorre film behind Sweeney Todd, the hotel he trashed with Kate Moss and the arthropod named after Edward Scissorhands. It suits a movie night, a pub quiz film round or anyone who has argued about the trial. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia entry on the actor and his films, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which state was Johnny Depp born in 1963?
Kentucky
Kentucky. Depp was born in Owensboro, but his family moved often and settled in Miramar, Florida, when he was seven, so he grew up a Floridian.
Q 02What was Depp's feature film debut, in 1984?
A Nightmare on Elm Street
A Nightmare on Elm Street. Depp, who had never acted before, plays a teenager who is swallowed by his own bed, which then spouts a geyser of blood.
Q 03Which actor advised Depp to try acting and helped him land his first film audition?
Nicolas Cage
Nicolas Cage. Depp's then-wife introduced them, and Cage steered the struggling musician to a Hollywood agent.
Q 04Depp became a teen idol playing an undercover cop on which Fox series, from 1987?
21 Jump Street
21 Jump Street. Depp resented being marketed as a teen heartthrob, so when he left the show he chose odder film roles with maverick directors.
Q 05Which instrument did Johnny Depp take up at 12, then leave high school at 16 to play in a band?
Guitar
Guitar. Depp left school at 16 for a band that moved to Los Angeles, where he first took acting jobs to cover the bills his music couldn't.
Q 06Which garage band did Johnny Depp join as a teenager in Florida?
The Kids
The Kids. They moved to Los Angeles chasing a record deal, but money was so tight that Depp worked as a telemarketer, and the band split without one.
Q 07In From Hell (2001), Depp plays a police inspector hunting which real-life killer?
Jack the Ripper
Jack the Ripper. Depp's Frederick Abberline was the real inspector who led the 1888 Whitechapel hunt, and the title quotes a taunting letter mailed with half a human kidney.
Q 08Which John Waters musical comedy was Depp's first film release of 1990?
Cry-Baby
Cry-Baby. Depp played a 1950s teen rebel to shake off his own heartthrob image, and the film was later turned into a Broadway musical.
Q 09Which silent star's films did Depp study to play the near-wordless Edward in his first Tim Burton film?
Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin. Depp studied how Chaplin expressed himself without words, and said the one thing Tim Burton stressed was keeping the character 'pure', without begging people to feel sorry for him.
Q 10An extinct arthropod with prominent claws was named after Depp thanks to which role?
Edward Scissorhands
Edward Scissorhands. The palaeontologist who described the Cambrian fossil said its claws made him think of the character, and admitted he was a bit of a Depp fan.
Q 11Which 1993 sleeper hit had Depp playing an eccentric, illiterate silent-film fan?
Benny and Joon
Benny and Joon. Its soundtrack turned the Proclaimers' five-year-old 'I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)' into a top-three hit in the United States.
Q 12Who played Bela Lugosi opposite Depp in Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994)?
Martin Landau
Martin Landau. He won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar as the faded Dracula star, even though the film failed to earn back its budget.
Q 13Which 1995 Jim Jarmusch Western starring Depp was shot entirely in black and white?
Dead Man
Dead Man. Neil Young improvised the score alone in a studio while watching the film, and Depp plays an accountant who shares the poet William Blake's name.
Q 21For which film did Depp win his first Golden Globe, for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy?
Sweeney Todd
Sweeney Todd. It was the first film role that required Depp to sing, as Sondheim's vengeful barber whose victims are baked into meat pies.
Q 22Depp plays the victim in a 2017 film of which Agatha Christie mystery?
Murder on the Orient Express
Murder on the Orient Express. Depp's shady businessman Ratchett is found stabbed a dozen times, and director Kenneth Branagh investigates as Hercule Poirot.
Q 23Which Burton and Depp film adapts a 1960s soap opera?
Dark Shadows
Q 14FBI agent Joseph Pistone's years undercover in the Mafia became which Johnny Depp film?
Donnie Brasco
Donnie Brasco. That was Pistone's alias as a jewel thief inside New York's Bonanno crime family, and Depp spent time with the real agent to prepare.
Q 15What was Johnny Depp's 1997 directorial debut, co-starring Marlon Brando and never released in the US?
The Brave
The Brave. Depp also co-wrote it and stars as a destitute Native American father who sells his life to snuff-film makers to lift his family out of poverty.
Q 16Depp played Raoul Duke, alter ego of which writer friend, in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?
Hunter S. Thompson
Hunter S. Thompson. Depp became a close friend, and after the writer's death in 2005 he paid for the funeral, at which the ashes were fired from a cannon.
Q 17Depp said Angela Lansbury, Roddy McDowall and Basil Rathbone inspired his take on which Tim Burton character?
Ichabod Crane
Ichabod Crane. Depp borrowed the drive of Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes and Lansbury's 'righteousness' for Sleepy Hollow's constable, whom he saw as 'a frightened little girl'.
Q 18Which two figures did Depp say he modeled Captain Jack Sparrow on?
Keith Richards and Pepé Le Pew
Keith Richards and Pepé Le Pew. Disney executives asked whether the slurring pirate was meant to be drunk, and Richards later played Sparrow's father in two sequels.
Q 19Which role brought Depp his first Oscar nomination?
Jack Sparrow
Jack Sparrow. After years of cult films, a pirate from a movie based on a Disneyland ride made Depp a Best Actor nominee.
Q 20Which real author does Depp play in Finding Neverland (2004)?
J. M. Barrie
J. M. Barrie. The film shows the playwright befriending the Llewelyn Davies boys, whose make-believe games gave him the idea for Peter Pan.
Dark Shadows. Depp had loved its vampire, Barnabas Collins, since boyhood, pushed Burton to film the soap, and co-produced it as well as starring.
Q 24Which real gangster does Depp play in Michael Mann's Public Enemies (2009)?
John Dillinger
John Dillinger. Federal agents shot the bank robber dead in 1934 as he walked out of a movie at Chicago's Biograph Theater.
Q 25Which Depp collaboration became Tim Burton's first film to gross over $1 billion worldwide?
Alice in Wonderland
Alice in Wonderland. Disney's film chief said its $1 billion success in 2010 prompted the studio's run of live-action remakes of its animated classics.
Q 26What kind of animal does Depp voice in the Oscar-winning animated film Rango (2011)?
A chameleon
A chameleon. Rango is a pet lizard who bluffs his way into becoming sheriff of a desert town, and the cast acted out their scenes on a stage for the animators.
Q 27Secret Window (2004), starring Depp as a blocked writer, is based on a novella by which author?
Stephen King
Stephen King. In his novella Secret Window, Secret Garden, a stranger turns up at a writer's cabin and accuses him of stealing his story.
Q 28Depp's casting as which Native American character in a 2013 Disney Western drew accusations of whitewashing?
Tonto
Tonto. Depp gave him black-and-white face paint and a dead crow worn as a headdress, a look he said he took from a painting.
Q 29Which Boston crime boss does Depp play in Black Mass (2015)?
Whitey Bulger
Whitey Bulger. The Boston mobster rose to power while secretly informing for the FBI, which he always denied, then spent 16 years on the run.
Q 30Which luxury house signed Depp in 2015 as the face of its men's fragrance Sauvage?
Dior
Dior. In 2019 the house pulled a Sauvage advert starring Depp after critics objected to its use of Native American imagery beside the fragrance's name.