Update: Crisis averted! According to Australia's Nine News Brisbane, Johnny Depp has reunited with his wife, Amber Heard, in Australia, where he will continue shooting the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
Earlier: Johnny Depp, the bohemian movie star of our teenage dreams, may have gone missing according to Australia’s daily newspaper the Gold Coast Bulletin. The paper reports today that the Oscar nominee “failed to board his scheduled private charter flight from Los Angeles back to Australia” where he was due to resume filming Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.
People miss flights all the time, though! So why is Depp’s alleged airline absence noteworthy? Because both the Bulletin and now People are reporting that Depp has not alerted the Pirates of the Caribbean crew of his whereabouts and is essentially off the grid. Production on the mega-budget movie had already been halted once after the actor injured his hand in early March and flew back to the U.S. for surgery. Depp was scheduled to begin filming again, as his beloved Keith Richards–inspired character, Captain Jack Sparrow, this week. With Depp M.I.A. though, production is said to have quickly shuffled the shooting schedule so that the crew could film certain scenes without their franchise star present. So just where is Depp and what exactly is going on?
In the five years since he was proclaimed Hollywood’s highest-paid movie star, grossing an estimated $75 million in 2010, the frequent Tim Burton collaborator has fallen slightly out of critical favor with projects like The Tourist, The Rum Diary, Dark Shadows, The Lone Ranger, and, most recently, the Gwyneth Paltrow co-starring comedy Mortdecai.
Some of the actor’s offscreen antics have seemed similarly befuddling for one of Hollywood’s most respected leading men. In November, the actor made a bizarre appearance at the Hollywood Film Awards, cursing his way through a presenter speech. In January, Depp missed a press conference for Mortdecai. The same month, a very tired-looking Depp talked to Jimmy Kimmel about working so incessantly that he had long lost count of his film projects. But in February, it seemed as though Depp was bound for personal happiness after marrying Heard on his 45-acre island in the Bahamas.
Maybe our immaculately accessorized movie darling just needed a break, and is holed up in some hotel room, ordering room service and binge-watching Orange Is the New Black and the other Netflix glories he missed out on while being a Movie Star. And after grossing $8 billion at the global box office over a three-decade career, doesn’t Depp deserve at least that?
