Johnny Depp’s flamboyant portrayal of Jack Sparrow in “Pirates of the Caribbean” was good enough for an Oscar nomination, but the actor says Disney was less than thrilled.

Depp talked about it in an interview with rocker Patti Smith for the January edition of Vanity Fair magazine. Depp said Disney “couldn’t stand” his Sparrow and one person there even asked if Sparrow was gay. Depp told the Disney executive “all my characters are gay,” and he said that “really made her nervous.”

Depp’s next role is in the movie “The Tourist” with Angelina Jolie. It opens Dec. 10. Here is part of his interview with Vanity Fair.

On meeting Angelina Jolie:

‘Meeting her and getting to know her was a real pleasant surprise,’ Johnny Depp tells rock legend Patti Smith, writing for Vanity Fair, of working with Angelina Jolie on their upcoming film, The Tourist. ‘You don’t know what she might be like; if she has any sense of humor at all. I was so pleased to find that she is incredibly normal, and has a wonderfully kind of dark, perverse sense of humor.’

On the challenges he and his co-star faced with constant media scrutiny on set:

‘Poor thing, dogged by paparazzi, her and her husband, Brad…all their kids. There are times when you see how ridiculous is this life, how ludicrous it is, you know, leaving your house every morning and being followed by paparazzi.’

On the difficulties that arose while filming together/ having to be discreet to avoid unwarranted speculation:

‘[We had] to hide, sometimes not even being able to talk to each other in public because someone will take a photograph and it will be misconstrued and turned into some other ****.’

On how Disney hated his portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow:

‘They couldn’t stand him. They just couldn’t stand him,’ Depp says of Disney’s reaction to his controversial interpretation of Sparrow. ‘I think it was Michael Eisner, the head of Disney at the time, who was quoted as saying, ‘He’s ruining the movie.”

MORE INTERVIEW – AND ANOTHER PIC AFTER THE JUMP!

On how Jolie is like another famous leading lady:

‘I’ve had the honor and the pleasure and gift of having known Elizabeth Taylor for a number of years,’ he says. ‘You know, you sit down with her, she slings hash, she sits there and cusses like a sailor, and she’s hilarious. Angie’s got the same kind of thing, you know, the same approach.’

On remaining unfazed by the studio’s hysteria:

‘Upper-echelon Disney-ites, going, What’s wrong with him? Is he, you know, like some kind of weird simpleton? Is he drunk? By the way, is he gay?… And so I actually told this woman who was the Disney-ite… ‘But didn’t you know that all my characters are gay?’ Which really made her nervous.’

On the appeal of his role of a mathematician in The Tourist:

‘I was always fascinated by people who are considered completely normal, because I find them the weirdest of all.’

On the complications of having played so many eccentric roles in his career:

‘They’re all still there, which on some level can’t be the healthiest thing in the world…. I always picture it as this chest of drawers in your body; Ed Wood is in one, the Hatter is in another, Scissorhands is in another… They’re still very close to the surface.’

On what he’d still like to accomplish:

‘[Marlon Brando said,] Why don’t you just take a year and go and study Shakespeare, or go and study Hamlet. Go and work on Hamlet and play that part. Play that part before you’re too old…. So what he was trying to tell me was: play that ****ing part, man. Play that part before you’re too long in the tooth. Play it. And I would like to. I’d really, really like to.’

Tags: Johnny Depp, Vanity Fair