Hollywood actor Johnny Depp said on Friday he felt a personal responsibility to make his latest film about how the work of large corporations led to the mercury poisoning of a group of Japanese coastal communities in the early 1970s.
“Films like this don’t get made every day,” the 56-year-old Depp told a Berlin film festival press conference marking the premiere of the film “Minamata,” which is directed by New York film-maker Andrew Levitas.
Depp plays the American photographer W Eugene Smith in the film, who finds himself battling powerful corporate interests responsible for the poisoning of communities around the Japanese town of Minamata in 1971.
The star of such box office successes as “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” “Edward Scissorhands” and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, Depp characterized his role in the film as “the power of the small.”
“You chip away little by little so that a problem can be toppled,” he said.
Depp went on to say that he hoped “Minamata” would “spark some interest or care [among people] that they have been blind to it before.”
Levitas paid tribute to Depp’s efforts as a driving force behind making the film, saying “it came out of Johnny’s heart and passion.”
The film, said Levitas, was “a very personal dream” for Depp.
