Johnny Depp Movies Ranked: 10 Best, From Sweeney Todd to Ed Wood

Johnny Depp movies are full of outsiders. Johnny Depp began his film career in a horror classic in the mid-1980s, became a teen idol on television, and then spent the following decades running from that image into roles that were odd, vulnerable and often heavily disguised: a boy with scissors for hands, a cross-dressing director of terrible films, a pirate who sways as if he is still at sea. His long partnership with Tim Burton produced much of his best work, but some of his strongest performances came in grounded crime dramas.

Each role is ranked on the performance before anything else: how much Depp brings to the character, how far it stretches him and how much it shaped his career. The quality of the film settles close calls. That approach rewards his gentler, stranger work over his biggest hits, and it explains why a black-and-white comedy about a failed filmmaker sits at the top. The result moves from gothic fairy tales to undercover drama to a bloody musical, which is a fair summary of a career that has rarely stood still.

Johnny Depp Movies Ranked by Role and Director

10. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

Tim Burton's film of Stephen Sondheim's musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street stars Depp as Benjamin Barker, a barber who returns to Victorian London under the name Sweeney Todd after years of unjust exile. Judge Turpin, played by Alan Rickman, sent him away in order to take his wife, and Todd sets up shop above the pie shop of Mrs. Lovett, played by Helena Bonham Carter, plotting revenge. Timothy Spall plays the judge's toadying Beadle, and Sacha Baron Cohen plays the rival barber Pirelli.

Depp handles Sondheim's demanding songs with a raw, rock-inflected voice, and his Todd is a figure of grief turned murderous, pale and hollow-eyed. The bloodshed is extreme, and the film works as musical and gothic horror at once. He earned a Best Actor nomination at the 2008 Academy Awards. It opens the countdown because the singing occasionally limits the acting, but it stands as one of the boldest risks of his career.

9. Black Mass (2015)

Scott Cooper's Black Mass tells the true story of James 'Whitey' Bulger, a South Boston gangster who became an FBI informant in the 1970s and used that protection to expand his criminal empire. Depp plays Bulger, while Joel Edgerton plays John Connolly, the childhood friend turned FBI agent who makes the deal. Kevin Bacon plays Connolly's boss Charles McGuire, Julianne Nicholson plays Connolly's wife Marianne, and Dakota Johnson plays Lindsey Cyr, the mother of Bulger's son.

With thinning hair and pale, cold eyes, Depp disappears into Bulger, playing him as watchful and capable of sudden, terrifying violence. A dinner scene in which he toys with an FBI agent over a family recipe is a masterclass in menace. It ranks ninth because the film around him is more conventional than the performance, but it marked a strong return to grounded crime drama after years of whimsical roles.

8. Finding Neverland (2004)

Marc Forster's Finding Neverland casts Depp as J.M. Barrie, the Scottish playwright in Edwardian London whose friendship with the widowed Sylvia Llewelyn Davies and her young sons inspires Peter Pan. Kate Winslet plays Sylvia, Freddie Highmore plays Peter, the boy grieving his father, Julie Christie plays Sylvia's disapproving mother Emma du Maurier, and Dustin Hoffman plays the theater producer Charles Frohman, who reluctantly backs Barrie's peculiar new play.

Barrie is a grown man who refuses to stop playing, and Depp makes his childlike imagination feel like a form of grace rather than an eccentricity. His Scottish accent is soft and convincing, and his scenes with Highmore are touching without tipping into sentimentality. The performance earned a Best Actor nomination at the 2005 Academy Awards. Eighth place reflects a beautifully judged turn in a film that is gentle by design, and it shows how affecting Depp can be when he plays a dreamer without any grotesque edge.

7. What's Eating Gilbert Grape (1993)

Lasse Hallström's What's Eating Gilbert Grape is set in the tiny Iowa town of Endora, where Gilbert, played by Depp, works at a grocery store and holds his family together. He looks after his younger brother Arnie, who has an intellectual disability and is played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and his grieving mother, played by Darlene Cates, who has not left the house in years. Mary Steenburgen plays Betty Carver, a married woman having an affair with Gilbert, and Juliette Lewis plays Becky, a free-spirited traveler stranded in town.

Depp plays the quietest role in the countdown, a young man so exhausted by responsibility that he has stopped expecting anything for himself. His frustration with Arnie, and the love underneath it, gives the film its emotional weight, and he generously cedes the spotlight to DiCaprio's remarkable performance. Seventh place recognizes how much he conveys with stillness. It is a gentle, bittersweet drama and one of the most humane films he has made.

6. Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow reimagines Washington Irving's tale, with Depp as Ichabod Crane, a New York police constable sent in 1799 to the remote Hudson Valley village of Sleepy Hollow to investigate a string of beheadings. The villagers blame the Headless Horseman, a ghostly Hessian soldier, but the scientific Ichabod suspects a human killer. Christina Ricci plays Katrina Van Tassel, Michael Gambon plays her wealthy father Baltus, Miranda Richardson plays Lady Van Tassel, and Casper Van Dien plays the jealous Brom Van Brunt.

Depp's Ichabod is a squeamish rationalist who faints at the sight of blood, which makes him a delightfully unlikely hero for a gothic horror film. He plays the role with comic timing and a touch of melancholy, balancing Burton's gruesome imagery with charm. Sixth place reflects a performance that is great fun even if it is less layered than the films above it. It makes an ideal choice for a spooky evening and sits comfortably among the classic Halloween movies.

5. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, adapted from Hunter S. Thompson's book, follows Raoul Duke, a journalist sent to Las Vegas in 1971 to cover a desert motorcycle race, and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, played by Benicio del Toro. The trip quickly dissolves into a haze of drugs, paranoia and wrecked hotel rooms. Tobey Maguire appears as a terrified hitchhiker they pick up on the way, and Gilliam's visual style turns every hallucination into a grotesque spectacle.

Depp plays Duke, Thompson's alter ego, with a shaved head, a cigarette holder and a stiff, lurching walk, a full physical transformation that keeps the film's chaos anchored. His narration captures Thompson's mix of savage humor and real grief for the lost spirit of the 1960s. The film is deliberately exhausting, which keeps it from ranking higher, but fifth place honors one of the most fearless performances of his career and a portrait of a counterculture icon delivered with total commitment.

4. Donnie Brasco (1997)

Mike Newell's Donnie Brasco tells the true story of Joe Pistone, an FBI agent who went undercover in the New York mob in the late 1970s under the name Donnie Brasco. Depp plays Joe, posing as a jewel expert, who is taken under the wing of Lefty Ruggiero, a weary, low-ranking hitman played by Al Pacino. Michael Madsen plays the ambitious captain Sonny Black, Bruno Kirby plays the wisecracking Nicky, and James Russo plays Paulie, another member of the crew.

The film works as a crime drama, but its power lies in the bond between Joe and Lefty. Depp plays Joe as a man slowly losing himself in the role, growing closer to the mobsters than to his own wife and children, and dreading what will happen to Lefty when the truth comes out. Opposite Pacino, he delivers one of his most restrained performances, with no disguise and no quirks. Fourth place reflects proof that Depp could be just as compelling as an ordinary man under pressure.

3. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)

Gore Verbinski's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl turned a theme park ride into a swashbuckling adventure and made Captain Jack Sparrow a pop culture icon. Depp plays Jack, a swaying, slurring pirate trying to win back his stolen ship, the Black Pearl, from his former first mate Barbossa, played by Geoffrey Rush, whose crew is cursed to live as the undead. Orlando Bloom plays the blacksmith Will Turner, Keira Knightley plays the governor's daughter Elizabeth Swann, and Jack Davenport plays Commodore Norrington.

Few performances have defined a franchise so completely. Depp makes Jack a rock-star con man whose apparent drunkenness hides a sharp tactical mind, and his unpredictable rhythms keep every scene pleasantly off-balance. The role earned him a Best Actor nomination at the 2004 Academy Awards, a rare honor for a family adventure film. It ranks third because the later sequels diluted the character, but the original performance remains a wildly inventive piece of comic acting.

2. Edward Scissorhands (1990)

In Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands, Depp plays an artificial young man left unfinished when his inventor died, living alone in a gothic mansion with blades where his hands should be. An Avon saleswoman named Peg, played by Dianne Wiest, finds him and brings him home to her pastel suburb, where the neighbors are fascinated by his talent for topiary and haircuts. Winona Ryder plays Peg's daughter Kim, Anthony Michael Hall plays her jealous boyfriend Jim, and Kathy Baker plays Joyce, a bored housewife with designs on Edward.

Depp has very little dialogue, and the performance lives in his eyes and posture: wary, curious and painfully gentle. Edward's love for Kim is the heart of a fairy tale about how a community embraces and then turns on anyone different. It ranks second because it launched the Depp and Burton partnership and established the wounded outsider at the center of his career. The scene in which Edward carves ice while Kim dances beneath the falling flakes is one of the most beautiful images in his filmography.

1. Ed Wood (1994)

Tim Burton's Ed Wood is a black-and-white tribute to Edward D. Wood Jr., the cheerful, endlessly optimistic director behind some of the most notoriously bad films of 1950s Hollywood. Depp plays Ed as a man with boundless enthusiasm and very little talent, assembling a troupe of misfits to make cheap science fiction and horror pictures. Martin Landau plays the aging, drug-addicted Bela Lugosi, whom Ed befriends and casts, Sarah Jessica Parker plays his girlfriend Dolores Fuller, Patricia Arquette plays Kathy O'Hara, and Jeffrey Jones plays the psychic Criswell.

This is Depp's most joyful performance. He plays Ed with a wide, hopeful grin and the unshakable belief that every botched take is perfect, and the film never mocks him for it. His scenes with Landau, as Ed cares for Lugosi through illness and addiction, give the comedy real tenderness, and Ed's fondness for angora sweaters is treated with the same warmth as everything else about him. It takes first place as the role that best captures what makes Depp unique: sincerity in the strangest possible package.

Johnny Depp and Tim Burton: An Outsider Partnership

Tim Burton directed more of the countdown than anyone else: Ed Wood, Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow and Sweeney Todd. Their work together also includes Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland (2010), in which Depp played the Mad Hatter, and Dark Shadows (2012), with Depp as the vampire Barnabas Collins.

The partnership works because each man is drawn to the same figure: the misunderstood outsider whose strangeness hides a gentle heart. Edward, Ed and Ichabod are all variations on that idea, and Sweeney Todd is its darkest form, a gentle man made monstrous by injustice. Burton supplies the gothic worlds; Depp supplies the sincerity that keeps those worlds from feeling like costume parties. When the balance tips toward spectacle, the films lose something, which is why the earlier collaborations rank highest.

Honorable Mentions From Depp's Career

• Benny & Joon (1993): as Sam, an eccentric admirer of silent comedy who falls for a young woman with mental illness.
• Dead Man (1995): as William Blake, an accountant on the run in the American West, in a dreamlike, black-and-white western.
• Cry-Baby (1990): as Wade Walker, a 1950s juvenile delinquent in a musical comedy that gently mocked his teen idol image.
• Platoon (1986): an early supporting part as Gator Lerner, a young soldier in Vietnam.
• From Hell (2001): as Inspector Fred Abberline, hunting Jack the Ripper through Victorian London.
• Minamata (2020): as the photographer W. Eugene Smith, documenting mercury poisoning in a Japanese fishing town.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Johnny Depp's best movie?

Ed Wood (1994) takes first place for his joyful performance as the optimistic B-movie director, just ahead of Edward Scissorhands.

How many Oscar nominations does Johnny Depp have?

Three, all for Best Actor: Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2004 ceremony), Finding Neverland (2005) and Sweeney Todd (2008).

Which Johnny Depp movies did Tim Burton direct?

Among his best, Burton directed Ed Wood, Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow and Sweeney Todd, along with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Alice in Wonderland and Dark Shadows.

What was Johnny Depp's first movie?

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), in which he played Glen Lantz, the boyfriend of the heroine Nancy.

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