NEW YORK -- Johnny Depp didn't just want to play Ichabod Crane, he wanted to look like him.

The famous hero of Washington Irving's 18th-century tale, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, was tall and thin with a hook nose and unusually large ears.

He was, in short, not a matinee idol. Johnny Depp is a matinee idol. The studio had a problem.

Guys who look like Ichabod Crane don't sell a lot of theatre tickets. And you'd have to be a pretty dopey studio head to green-light a plan to make Depp look ugly.

"My basic take on Ichabod Crane is I thought I can wear the prosthetic nose and the big ears and stuff like that,'' said Depp. "And the Paramount people weren't very enthusiastic about that."

Neither was director Tim Burton, whose Sleepy Hollow opens on Friday. He didn't want this Ichabod Crane to be too close to the cartoon version.

"Johnny wanted to look (like Irving's version of Crane), but we said no, because what was important to me was, even though we changed a lot of things, keeping the sort of character traits of Ichabod. We tried to be respectful of his eccentricities, his squeamishness, his sort of odd behaviour.

"The thing I appreciate most about his (Depp's) performance is his very subtle little expressions and tics and I think if we made him look more makeup-y, those things would have gotten lost in some ways."

Depp says he saw Crane as a "little too in touch with his feminine side" and developed his version of the character after old Sherlock Holmes films, Angela Lansbury's performance in Death on the Nile and - check this one out - the late Roddy McDowell.

Burton and Paramount probably said, "Fine, use whatever actor's process you wish, Johnny, just don't think of covering up that face."


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