The charismatic actor likes getting under the skin of the character he plays to pull off convincing portrayals. His method-acting preparation reached a new level when he trashed a hotel room so bad, he needed to find a scapegoat. When the damage was done, he blamed the mess on an angry armadillo — one that no one ever found.
Johnny Depp has achieved it all, be it becoming the epitome of versatility when it comes to his acting career or living life king size while always having a certain number of controversies in his personal life. One such fun controversy from his past is when he trashed a room of an expensive hotel that he was staying in, and he blamed the whole act of trashing on an angry armadillo.
Highlights —
- How Johnny Depp blamed an armadillo for trashing his hotel
- Why Johnny Depp trashed a hotel room
- Johnny Depp was arrested for something that, according to him, an angry animal did
What Actually Happened?
Since his debut in 1984’s ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’, he has been a very progressive actor with a peculiar taste in the choice of roles. From titular Edward Scissorhands in the Tim Burton’s classic, Ichabod Crane in 1999’s ‘Sleepy Hollow’, and the murderous lead barber in 2007’s ‘Sweeney Todd’, he has acted out almost all the emotions and traits that are known to mankind on the big screen with grace.
Depp relies on his method-acting for almost every character that he gets to play. One such role that Depp prepared for through method acting was that of ‘Raoul Duke’ for a film adaptation of a book written by Hunter S. Thompson. In 1998, Depp came on board the adaptation of Thompson’s book ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’. Depp famously spent months living with Thompson, manoeuvring himself to learn his mannerisms and speech patterns as well as get into his head.
It is quite possible that Depp’s own real-life partying helped inspire his time on the set as well. In one scene of the famous film, Raoul Duke and his “associate” Dr. Gonzo — portrayed by Benicio Del Toro — utterly trash a hotel room.
Before portraying the troublemaking Raoul Duke, Depp had his own real-life hotel trash act that was so bad the police had to be called. According to reports, Depp was staying in The Mark Hotel in New York in 1994 in an expensive room priced $1,200 a night with then-girlfriend Kate Moss.
Depp said that an angry armadillo had been hiding in the closet and that the resulting damage was caused during Depp’s attempts to protect himself from the creature.
The Follow Up of the Incident
After Depp had told his so-called story of the whole incident to authorities, they tried to investigate and find the concerned armadillo. The armadillo was never found, but Depp was arrested on criminal mischief charges and was billed nearly $10,000 in damages.
