Johnny Depp’s victim act nearly as convincing as his Jack Sparrow

Normally lifetime achievement awards are meaningless: vapid acts of virtue-signalling designed to lure big names to seaside luvvie love-ins. This time it was different.

US actor Johnny Depp receives the Donostia Award for his career, in the 69th San Sebastian Film Festival. Picture: AFP

You’ve possibly heard about Johnny Depp and the Spanish film festival at which he has just been given a lifetime achievement award for playing Captain Jack Sparrow. Normally these awards are meaningless: vapid acts of virtue-signalling designed to lure big names to seaside luvvie love-ins. This time it was different.

In deciding to give Depp an honour, the film dwarfs at San Sebastian appeared to make a big political statement. What they seemed to be saying was that if you are a loaded and successful male movie star, there is really nothing you can do to destroy your career.

You can be labelled a “wife-beater”, as Depp was less than a year ago, but people will still roll out el red carpet. You can describe Jack Sparrow as a role you felt you had “whored for all these f***ing wasted piece of shit nothing years on”, as we learnt he did at the trial, but people will still shower you with awards for your acting, telling you will be “part of cinema history for ever”.

Johnny Depp poses during a photocall few hours before receiving the Donostia Award for his career. Picture: AFP

They will still overlook your moth-eaten Pablo Picasso tribute outfit and let you give a speech blaming “cancel culture” for your own appalling behaviour. On Wednesday, just before he accepted the award, Depp (dressed ostensibly as Pablo) said no one was “safe” from the “instant rush to judgment based on essentially what amounts to polluted air that’s exhaled”. He said he felt certain “movements”, by which presumably he meant #MeToo, had got “so far out of hand that I can promise you that no one is safe”.

But how is someone like the feted Hollywood millionaire Depp not safe? He is so safe he can literally be labelled a wife-beater and then pick up a lifetime achievement award within a year. Depp is so safe he can claim to be the victim and somehow people will instantly believe him, which can hardly be said of any woman, even though the bald truth is he was the one who brought the libel case in which we found out he was the one who did the awful things, like setting fire to cushions and throwing vases of flowers and screaming “I’ll f***ing kill you” at his ex-wife, Amber Heard. I can’t think of a clearer case in which someone has done something stupid and rued the consequences before blaming it on two different sets of people.

It’s funny, though, isn’t it, how the world inexorably tacks back to the status quo: protecting the very people who don’t need protecting - rich, successful men. My first thoughts in Depp’s case were: how long will he be out on a limb? Two years, tops? He may have lost his big acting gig (Harry Potter), but who cares? Hollywood still needs him. It’s not like he’s weird Woody or revolting Harvey, two men who’d both outlived their usefulness to the moneymakers of entertainment. If Harvey’s company hadn’t been tanking, would he have ended up in prison? My guess is no.

Johnny Depp with ex-wife Amber Heard in 2015 in Venice, Italy. Picture: Getty

Depp wasn’t Armie Hammer, either, a much less charismatic performer who’d got tangled up in allegations of cannibalism: there are some accusations you just can’t survive. Wife-beating, though, is eminently survivable, it turns out, a bit like antisemitism. It’s one of those crimes people get angry about occasionally, when it suits them. But otherwise people just don’t care.

It’s true the term itself is comical, redolent of Victorian baddies walloping lusty prostitutes while half in the knack. Then there’s Depp’s own image: wasn’t violence kind of part of his cool vibe? If you are at the top of a society that celebrates smashing up hotels, no one’s going to be too livid when it turns out you smash other things as well.

Then there was the court case. Not many serious trials can be turned into a fashion show, but it turns out ones about attacking women can. Any hope of making a valuable political point evaporated the moment both parties appeared dressed like exhumed extras from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I think Depp probably knew most people would view the whole thing as light entertainment. He knew they’d take one look at Heard and find her kind of dishonest and trivial: the sort of woman who, frankly, deserved a light tap.

It is not even as if I want Depp to be cancelled: I would like to see him back on the screen. What I don’t want is for him to pretend he is a victim, knowing there is a vast and active network of flunkies prepared to stand up in court and say he’s a good guy when he isn’t. Time and again witnesses said he was no “monster”, but a misunderstood “Southern gentleman” whose dollars 30,000-a-month wine habit and endless use of drugs was just part of his charm. The festival flunkies now continue to enable this false sense of victimhood: far from being a victim, though, he’s got away with it - again.

The Sunday Times