Is Pirates of the Caribbean Jack Sparrow based on Calico Jack Rackham?
Johnny Depp based the character, he says, on a combination of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and the cartoon character Pepé Le Pew. Quote from Depp: Richards, in fact, was the inspiration for Captain Jack and has a small role in the new “Pirates” movie, “At World’s End.” “He was one of the people I admired for what he’s done and how he’s handled it,” Depp, 43, tells Rolling Stone magazine in its latest issue. Talking to the Associated Press, Depp described Jack as “part rock-star, Keith Richards-kind-of-guy and part Pepe Le Pew.” From co writer Ted Elliot Ted Elliott: We wrote a very specific character and Johnny played that character but his performance was one neither of us could have imagined. We wanted to create this trickster. If you go all the way back to [Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel] Treasure Island, we kind of borrowed the moral ambiguity of that story. The whole thing comes down to [young boy] Jim Hawkins making the call as to whether [pirate] Long John Silver is a
