Jack Sparrow was written as a sidekick and partly modelled on Keith Richards
Captain Jack Sparrow was meant to be a supporting part, with Elizabeth Swann planned as the trilogy's lead. Johnny Depp built the pirate from Keith Richards, Groucho Marx and Looney Tunes characters such as Bugs Bunny, and the swaying trickster stole the franchise so completely that Disney rewrote its theme-park ride around him.
The role passed through several hands. Screenwriter Jay Wolpert produced an early version, and Stuart Beattie later said he wrote his drafts imagining Hugh Jackman, then little known outside Australia. Jim Carrey was considered but was busy with Bruce Almighty, and Michael Keaton and Christopher Walken were also discussed. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer first pictured a cocky young Burt Lancaster type, then chose Depp, believing he would give a Disney film enough edge to draw teenagers and adults.
Depp had visited the studio in 2001 looking for a family film and liked the script's oddities: the Black Pearl's crew wanted to return treasure, not steal it, to lift a curse, and the obligatory mutiny had already happened before the story began. He was cast on 10 June 2002. Writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio saw Sparrow as a trickster in the Bugs Bunny and Groucho mould, a man who survives by talking, bargaining and running away rather than fighting.
Director Gore Verbinski admitted the first film existed before Jack was dropped into it; the character drifts through the plot, nudging everyone else. For the sequel he warned against serving too much Jack, comparing a film built only on him to a garlic milkshake: the spice needs plenty of straight men around it. By At World's End the pirate is half mad from solitary confinement in Davy Jones's Locker, arguing with hallucinated copies of himself about whether to seek immortality.
Depp's first outing earned him an Oscar nomination. In 2006 Disney added Sparrow to a revised version of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride to tie it to the films, and he headlined a stage show at Disney's Hollywood Studios. Spin-off novels imagine his childhood, while later films sent him after the Fountain of Youth and the Trident of Poseidon.
Source: Jack Sparrow
