Tim Burton

Johnny Depp Discusses Playing a Vampire in Dark Shadows; Two New TV Spots Released

With Dark Shadows arriving in theaters today, fans will finally get a chance to see Johnny Depp's take on the vampire craze that's sweeping through TV and movies. During the movie's press conference, Depp revealed that Dark Shadows is "a kind of rebellion against vampires that look like, you know, underwear models," so it's a solid guess that Depp wasn't watching DVDs of The Vampire Diaries for inspiration. In fact, Depp also revealed that his performance as the 200-year-old vampire Barnabas Collins was mostly based on Jonathan Frid's portrayal of the character from the Dark Shadows soap opera that ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971.

Approaching Barnabas, even in the early days of trying to explore the possibilities of the character, no matter where you went in your head, if you tried to veer away from the original Jonathan Frid character, it was apparent to both Tim [Burton] and myself that it had to be rooted in Jonathan Frid's character of Barnabas. It just had to be. It was so classic and the sort of classic monster, you know like Fangoria magazine and that sort of thing. In terms of that, Jonathan did have, when he was playing Barnabas, there was a kind of rigidity to him, kind of that pole up the back, an elegance that was always there.