Johnny Depp is Willy Wonka in Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.

NASSAU, Bahamas -- Move over George Hamilton. Johnny Depp is dark. Mahogany dark, like a light-roast coffee bean in the sun.

"What can I tell you? Three months on a boat," says the actor, who's in a nine-month-plus process of playing the ghost-pirate Capt. Jack in two consecutive sequels to Pirates Of The Caribbean in this ex-pirate sanctuary turned pina colada paradise.

"I'm not using any sunblock at this point," says Depp, who actually owns a 35-acre island not far from Nassau. "You do when you start out, because the sun out here will really take a bite out of you if you don't. But I've sort of levelled off. I don't think I'll get any darker than this."

What makes his complexion more dramatic is that he's doing interviews to talk about pal Tim Burton's predictably out-there Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, adapted from Roald Dahl's classic children's book. In it, Depp plays the weirded-out chocolatier Willy Wonka with a deathly pale face and a silly, scared, geeky, socially maladroit manner, accompanied by odd mannerisms like a hand over the mouth when he giggles.

Kind of like, um ... well, Depp, Burton and the producers of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory aren't thrilled that some who've seen it feel the characterization evokes Michael Jackson.

"It actually never crossed my mind. Michael Jackson was not an ingredient or inspiration to the character at all," Depp says. "A few people have mentioned it and it kind of took me by surprise. I can on some level understand it, the look a little bit may evoke that. But you could just as easily think of some reclusive germophobe like Howard Hughes as well. Roald Dahl wrote this character in 1964 and Michael Jackson was a wee lad then."

Burton's response is to laugh derisively.

"Here's the deal: Michael

Jackson likes children, Willy Wonka can't stand them," the director says. "To me, that's a big difference in the whole persona, y'know?"

What is obvious is that the dark-minded Burton and the challenge-minded Depp have again collaborated on a movie about a gifted misanthropic outsider -- a vibe that goes back to their first movie together, Edward Scissorhands. As those who've read the book, or seen the 1971 movie Willy Wonka & The Chocolate

Factory (with Gene Wilder as Wonka) know, the story involves the announcement by the reclusive candyman to allow five children to tour his mysterious and reputedly magical factory. Said invitations are included, lottery-like, in random Wonka Bars shipped throughout the world.

The hero of the story, Charlie Bucket (Freddie Highmore, who also played opposite Depp in Finding Neverland), is a poor lad who lives with his entire family in a one-room house and gets his invite in a bar he purchases with money he finds on the street.

Charlie and the other kids -- a uniformly spoiled-rotten lot that includes Veruca Salt, Mike Teavee, Violet Beauregard and the porcine Augustus Gloop -- are led with media fanfare into a foundry that is part Fritz Lang industrial nightmare and part fantasyland (with a touch of 2001: A Space Odyssey), all dovetailing with Burton's love of pastel-hued heightened reality. There are marshmallow plants and cream-filled buttercups

(actually edible according to Highmore, who sampled them) and a chocolate river that actually stank. There are trained attack squirrels. And there are the Oompa Loompas, all played (and digitally multiplied) by the small-sized actor Deep Roy.

And there's Wonka himself, whose ulterior motive for inviting children into his world seems sinister on the surface, especially when they start falling prey to their own gluttony.

"It's good fun playing characters like Wonka, Capt. Jack, Raoul Duke from Fear And Loathing

(In Las Vegas), characters that can do things I would never dream of doing, or speak to people in a way that I would never bring myself to," Depp says.

"The material was seductive, but the fact that Tim was doing it was the catalyst. He went out on a limb for me in 1990 with Edward Scissorhands. And that's something I will never forget. And over the years (in collaborations like Sleepy Hollow and Ed Wood) he's had to butt heads with studios to get me because I wasn't very popular with studios. So there's a bond and a love and respect that will be there forever.

"And he also happens to be one of the most interesting filmmakers of all time, in my opinion."

Of course, things have changed after the box office hit

Pirates. These days Depp, who divides his time between his homes in L.A., France (where he lives with actress

Vanessa Paradis and their children Lily-Rose and Jack), is a top-ranked draw and is being paid a reported $37 million for the two Pirates sequels.

Says Burton: "This was the first time I didn't have to talk anybody into it. When I was offered this, before I could open my mouth, the studio goes, 'What about Johnny Depp?' And I go, 'Okay, if you're gonna force him on me.' "

Both take pains to praise Wilder for his performance, although Burton makes it clear he doesn't think much of the original film (Dahl hated it. His widow has since seen Burton's version, and according to producer Richard Zanuck, "is thrilled by it." Wilder, on the other hand, recently told the Daily Telegraph, "It's all about money ... Why else would you remake Willy Wonka?"

Both Burton and Depp tell almost identical stories about how the Wonka characterization came about, inspired by, according to Depp, "guys like Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Greenjeans and local guys like Uncle Al, and how odd it was the way they spoke, this bizarre musical rhythm and cadence to their speech pattern -- 'Good morning children ...'

"I tested it on Lily-Rose to see if I was going in the right direction with the sound of this voice. A lot of times what happens is you come up with these ideas and you never get to try them until a read-through. So with Lily-Rose, I was talking to her one day. Many times we've played Barbies where she says, 'Daddy, don't use that voice.' And what happened was we were playing and I started to use the Wonka voice, and she kind of lit up a little bit, like, 'Where's that coming from?' And I thought, 'Awright, I think I'm on the right track here.' "

He carried his experimentation to the filming. "The kids in the film, they were great. At first they weren't quite sure how to deal with (my ad libs), but they caught on and started enjoying it. I remember one time early on, I started speaking jive to Jordon (Fry), who played Mike Teavee. Like, 'It's in the fridge, daddy-o, are you hep to the jive?' And we're in rehearsal and I walked up to him and put my hand out and said, 'Slide me some skin, daddy-o.' And he tilted back at an angle, looking up at me and said, 'That's not in the script!' I just started laughing hysterically."

Being in Cruise/Hanks territory is an odd place for Depp, an actor without a persona.

"He's like a character actor in a leading man's body," Burton says. "He's more like Lon Chaney than a leading man. He likes to transform, play different characters in different movies. He's an actor that you'd think about perhaps even for female roles."

Depp himself is fairly self-effacing about his look. Asked about this 43-year-old's appeal to young women, he says, "Gosh, I don't know. I think it's that they see some of my movies and feel sorry for me." Dressed down in jeans and a worn white cotton shirt, he says, "I remember when I was

really, really young, 3 or 4, and my mom and dad dressed me up as a hobo for Halloween. And the only difference between what I looked like then and now is that they drew a little more beard than I'm able to grow."

He's not overly serious about how he got where he is ("That's what the ride is for the moment, it'll always change"), but he seems serious about what to do with it.

"My sister and I have this little company, we've made some recent acquisitions that are pretty exciting, some to be in and some to get made. We're very excited about the latest Nick Hornby novel, A Long Way Down. And there's this one by an Australian writer named Gregory David Roberts called Shantaram (about 10 years in the life of a drug-using armed robber on the run), which is a beautiful book.

"I've been doing things that I've chosen to do for quite a good stretch now. And that small core group of people -- and I hate to use the word fans -- that small core who've stuck with me all these years, y'know, I feel good for them. Because great masses of people decided to watch Pirates Of The Caribbean, they don't have to hang their heads in shame. At least not so much."

More Artists