Johnny Depp, 60 years between cinema and controversy

The best birthday present may have been given to him by Disney without explicitly blocking his return to the role of Captain Jack Sparrow if and when the studio relaunches the Pirate of the Caribbean franchise. Or maybe his daughter Lily Rose, who made him "a proud father" for the scandalous part of the pop star in Sam Levinson's red-hot series, The Idol. Or his ex-wife Amber Heard, who after a year paid him the million dollars required in the plea bargain after the defamation trial. The years also pass for Johnny Depp who turns 9 on June 60. Six decades still in the breach despite a fractured ankle last week that caused him to postpone the concerts of his band Hollywood Vampires and despite the controversy linked most recently to the verdict a year ago in which a jury in Fairfax in Virginia had ruled in favor against Heard at the end of a trial in which Johnny had been described as an abusive husband, drug addict and harasser. Depp had won the case but had come out with broken bones from the court case and his chances of returning to good and bad weather in Hollywood seemed forever over. Instead, surprisingly, the former Pirate is back to film: not only that, his Jeanne du Barry, in which he plays the part of King Louis XV, in May opened the Cannes Film Festival with seven minutes of standing ovation for him and the rest of the cast. Depp in the same days had obtained a record contract of 20 million dollars to be the testimonial of the Sauvage perfume of Dior, the faithful maison French that had not dumped him in the dark days of the trial. Meanwhile, a new cinematographic venture is being prepared: the direction of a biopic on Amedeo Modigliani with Riccardo Scamarcio as the protagonist and then the winner of the Cesar, Pierre Niney and Al Pacino. Filming is expected to begin in Budapest this fall and will be Depp's second feature behind the camera after 1997's The Brave, in which he also starred alongside friend Marlon Brando. But more than all this - and more than the album 18 released with friend and mentor Jeff Beck in the aftermath of the trial when it seemed that for Johnny cinema was a road now closed forever - there is the remote possibility of a return of Jack Sparrow, his most iconic role. Sean Bailey, president of Disney's Motion Pictures division, has not categorically blocked the way and when the New York Times asked him explicitly a few days ago he limited himself to saying that the studio "at this time is not committed". At the last Oscars, on the other hand, producer Jerry Bruckheimer had hoped for this possibility, anticipating that "we are very close" to having a script: "Personally I would like to. I can only say that."