Johnny Depp meets with sick kids in character as Jack Sparrow

HE’S BEEN in the headlines lately for all the wrong reasons, but Johnny Depp stepped it up yesterday and warmed the hearts of some sick children.

IT WAS the meeting of a lifetime for Ula Pryce-Davies.

The young Leukaemia patient met Johnny Depp at the Lady Cilento Hospital in South Brisbane on Tuesday night.

The 13-year-old said she was ecstatic to meet the star, even getting a peck on the cheek and a very special gift — directly from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie set.

“I got five coins but I gave a couple to a little girl going into surgery,” she said.

“She didn’t get to meet him and knowing he had given her that would have been special.

“You would be nervous if it was the first time you were having surgery.”

Ula said that Depp, for a character who didn’t shower much, smelt pretty good.

Captain Jack Sparrow made Ula Pryce-Davis’ day.

Miss Pryce-Davies was one of the many patients and staff who got a brush of fame with the visit from Johnny Depp.

Her mother Caitlin Pryce-Davies repeatedly thanked the Hollywood heavyweight for his visit.

“He was smiling and said ‘you’re so welcome’,” she said.

“Apparently it was all his idea ... That just makes me love him even more.”

The hospital visit came after fans got an insight into filming on the Gold Coast yesterday, when Hollywood and holiday-makers met in the middle of the Broadwater as Captain Jack Sparrow took a bow from the bow of a ghostly pirate ship beached at The Spit.

After almost six months of cloak-and-dagger filming on sets locked down by security patrols, fans of the multi-billion dollar Pirates film franchise finally got a birds-eye view of what goes on when cameras roll on the set of the most expensive movie ever shot in Australia — Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.

While police on jetskis discreetly patrolled in front of the film set, boaties circled to cast a curious eye over proceedings.

Day 83 of Pirates 5’s 93-day shoot saw Johnny Depp’s pirate character Captain Jack Sparrow front and centre for scenes filmed around the now-familiar pirate ship The Dying Gull at “the finger” — a strip of sand bordering the area of The Spit known as Bum’s Bay.

Cranes and tractors, graders, screens, ropes, pullies, trolleys and hoists have been trucked on to the sandy point to turn it into latest set of the $300 million Pirates 5 movie.

Originally published as Johnny Depp meets with sick kids in character as Jack Sparrow