now what about you and johnny depp doing something together because you two have been friends for a
long time haven't you there's nobody i uh admire more than mr depp and
evening uh uh bob uh downey uh you know we've known one another for a
million years and uh i like how you call robert downey bob yeah you know i mean we
sort of came up the ranks together you know in a weird way uh back in the 80s and stuff and um
and he's someone i've always admired and had a you know good relationship and uh he came over
uh one evening for uh for dinner he and his wife came for dinner and and uh my son was just like
you know sitting he couldn't he was just couldn't believe that he was sitting next to iron man
you know and so i saw i saw captain jack leave my son's eyes and iron man was the ticket
yeah i mean for me it was really just i just thought well you know at this point
i'll do anything i just got to pay the rent you know i was on the verge of being evicted
somebody hands you the ball and you run you know i mean and if you get hit you get hit
maybe you make it through you never know but i mean i i just know that somebody handed me the
ball at a certain point and i was hungry enough to keep running um and i'm still running i maintain
a hunger but not an ambition you know it's really um it's easy to to um embrace hopelessness when
things seem insurmountable and yet uh it's it's it's actually just a matter of time until all
the elements come together for things to be all right i mean i believe that you know most uh
difficult situations will resolve themselves if you are persistent and if you don't if you don't
give up entirely and that's what i never did i never gave up i started playing the guitar at the
age of 12. yeah it was the first real passion that i had so i literally don't remember going through
puberty because i locked myself in a room at the age of 12 12 13 and i just played the guitar
learned things off records and taught myself how to play it was my life and it was the only solace
it was the only sanctuary it was the only security it was my first love i had no intention of of
of making my my public my private life and my career so very difficult and yet i believe
you know as i sit here today that i i hope is for some higher purpose
i began to study at various places in the loft studio studied with some other teachers i read
all the books that you could read and all that was great but you realize that the only way to
learn how to it's not act necessarily the only way to learn how to react and behave
because it's just behavior and its reaction was to do it it's on the job training it's trial by fire
so i did my best to work up my own approach towards the character and such what really
helps you find that character is when you get into the ring with other actors which pushed me
well the last thing i want to look like is myself you know i've always felt that it was important to
escape i always figured if i just did the same thing over and over i'd normally bore myself but
i'd bore the audience you know i somehow in my mind i saw this opportunity like a way to mesh
characters like cartoon characters so i started thinking about the parameters that were available
to cartoon characters so i tried to incorporate these kind of ideas into the character of captain
jack sparrow so that i could try to push those parameters and control the sort of suspension of
disbelief to be able to control the characters actions words movements cartoon characters can
get away with things we can captain jack sparrow couldn't do things that i could never do he could
say things that i could never say so it was for me a way to stretch the parameters of a character
captain jack sparrow was a character that i had built from the ground up
and was something that i i of course put a lot of nice as you do with all characters but you put a
lot of yourself being as you are obviously known as being iron man are you concerned with wearing
a large thing in the exact same spot life is funny because i was doing this before i ever
got fitted for the rt so it was more of uh art imitating oddball stuff i was doing anyway even
more interesting because maybe you were born to be iron man because iron man obviously had that
loosely pre-arranged destiny and what's incredible is how far afield you can go
from it and still find your way back yeah i'd say it's 70 maintenance of what can i do to do my part
to stay out of the way and then the other part i always think of it as like this little super
thin invisible thread but you can feel the tug and you just kind of you have to be really gentle you
have to pause when agitated and you have to go for it when you're going like it there's four
walls in here which one has the map behind it you it's that one and you knock down the
wall and it's there you know yeah what is that though that's a synchronicity yeah uh intuition
i don't know right that's the big i don't know and i really feel it's so funny
at this point in my life and being you know kind of middle-aged and all that well i know
i'm gonna fly around the world i'm gonna sell some soap and i know i have a new project and
i know i've just retired my jersey on this 12-year journey i've been on and and how do i
want to start and it came up how would you like to go yes that's exactly what i'm going to do
i'm going to go have the joe rogan experience and kick off this year and this season and this
new chapter by doing what i love for many years i limited myself away from any sort of painting or
showing any paintings because the idea of making it or succeeding having success in one field
and then using that to uh instigate some other thing altogether i i i was afraid of that you know
i had i had far too much respect for art to try to put myself in into that world just because
people knew of me as an actor i didn't like that it didn't sit well with me
but um what i did was i limited myself and that's something that you know what you'd ever do
no one should ever do i think part of the reason i'm still so interested not just in life but also
you know getting to do what i do is i'm a fan i love movies i love creativity i love music i love
i love culture and the fact that i actually have a place in it while i'm observing it and digging it
is like it's it's it's an honor it's just i keep thinking see clearly and it's difficult because
i i feel like we all just get buffeted by feelings and ego or fears or little
you know chips of resentments or intuitions that are tied to something maybe higher but you think
is out of your reach or whatever so i need to be kept uh right-sized because i can easily fall into
self-seeking and depression and self-pity and judgment and all that stuff it's kind
of a it's a bit of a default but i spend enough energy and i've had enough uh help and no one
should accept anything but the truth to have to suffer the ignorance of someone lying to you for
some type of gain i think that the people who understand or know or get or or are touched or
you know he's so ignorant that he makes you laugh if they're moved by a captain jack sparrow
in any way i i um i don't need a company to do that um i can just do that myself and nobody can
take that away if i'm noticing anything now it's that we need to shift and we need new challenges
and just like society and politics things are moving and morphing and the information age
is making things so everything's learning and growing from everything so quickly and
improving or disproving but for me it's just incredible our culture never encourages taking
a break never encourages saying don't chase that thing because you've got it in your hands
so confidence you know there's been times when i've felt i'm in possession of it and then you
want to let go a little bit because it's only ever the moment in life guiding you the wind is
so at your back that you're like wow are you just are you just you know jumping over the waves and
all that by yourself and you're like you bet i am but there's a physics to the moment and the winds
at your back and then the wind does what the [ __ ] wind does and it changes and if you're
left there thinking what you know so i think it's great to be in full possession of what you
would call supreme confidence and then see what happens if you don't hold on to it so hard because
it's great but it is a bit of an illusion because like everything else it's always changing
the world needs people like you the world is literally dying for your kind
embrace that responsibility and run with it get out there in your teeth give back it's not
gonna be easy never gonna be easy for much of it you'll stand alone but you've got to stand strong
i mean i beg you do not give in to mediocrity like the other 98 of the world because you
would be doing yourselves and the world the greatest groups you're all too smart
too smart to let it go to waste i mean you've got one shot at this one
[ __ ] shot don't let a moment of itself buy grab it snatch it up make it yours
celebrate every moment celebrate every [ __ ] breath you have to realize that whatever your
day is whatever you're doing whatever your job is whatever people think of you or project you to be
none of it matters uh really until you look around and see people who who are in need
and i think probably the best benefit of my job is to help to make people smile who otherwise
wouldn't or couldn't have a smile on their face so um smile though your heart is
smile even though it's breaking when there are clouds in the sky you'll get by
you