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Captain Jack Sparrow is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the Pirates of the Caribbean film series and franchise. An early iteration of Sparrow was created by screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, but the final version of the character was created by actor Johnny Depp, who also portrayed him. The characterization of Sparrow is based on a combination of The Rolling Stones' guitarist Keith Richards and Looney Tunes cartoons, specifically the characters Bugs Bunny and Pepé Le Pew. He first appears in the 2003 film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. He later appears in the sequels Dead Man's Chest (2006), At World's End (2007), On Stranger Tides (2011), and Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017). In the films, Sparrow is one of the nine pirate lords in the Brethren Court, the Pirate Lords of the Seven Seas. He can be treacherous and survives mostly by using wit and negotiation rather than by force, opting to flee most dangerous situations and to fight only when necessary. Sparrow is introduced seeking to regain his ship, the Black Pearl, from his mutinous first mate Hector Barbossa. After succeeding, he attempts to escape his blood debt to the legendary Davy Jones while fighting the East India Trading Company. Later, when searching for the Fountain of Youth, he is abducted and taken upon Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge and is forced to lead him to the Fountain while the Black Pearl is trapped in a bottle. In a later adventure, when the ghost spanish Captain Armando Salazar comes after him, he searches for the Trident of Poseidon while also seeking to restore the Pearl to its original form. The Pirates of the Caribbean series was inspired by the Disney theme park ride of the same name, and when the ride was revamped in 2006, the character of Captain Jack Sparrow was added to it. He headlined the Legend of Captain Jack Sparrow attraction at Disney's Hollywood Studios, and is the subject of spin-off novels, including a children's book series, Pirates of the Caribbean: Jack Sparrow, which chronicles his childhood years. Concept and creation Character When writing the screenplay for The Curse of the Black Pearl, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio envisioned Captain Jack Sparrow as a supporting character in the vein of Bugs Bunny and Groucho Marx. The producers saw him as a young Burt Lancaster. Director Gore Verbinski admitted, "The first film was a movie, and then Jack was put into it almost. He doesn't have the obligations of the plot in the same ways that the other characters have. He meanders his way through, and he kind of affects everybody else." Sparrow represents an ethical pirate, with Captain Barbossa as his corrupt foil, though both characters viewed as both light and dark tricksters. His true motives usually remain masked, and whether he is honorable or evil depends on the audience's perspective. This acts as part of Will Turner's arc, in which Sparrow tells him a pirate can be a good man, like his father. Following the success of The Curse of the Black Pearl, the challenge to creating a sequel was, according to Verbinski, "You don't want just the Jack Sparrow movie. It's like having a garlic milkshake. He's the spice and you need a lot of straight men ... Let's not give them too much Jack. It's like too much dessert or too much of a good thing." Although Dead Man's Chest was written to propel the trilogy's plot, Sparrow's state-of-mind as he is pursued by Davy Jones becomes increasingly edgy, and the writers concocted the cannibal sequence to show that he was in danger whether on land or at sea. Sparrow is perplexed over his attraction to Elizabeth Swann, and attempts to justify it throughout the film. At World's End was meant to return it tonally to a character piece. Sparrow, in particular, is tinged with madness after extended solitary confinement in Davy Jones's Locker, and now desires immortality. Sparrow struggles with what it takes to be a moral person, after his honest streak caused his doom in the second film. This is mainly shown by his increasingly erratic behaviour and Jack's hallucinations, which appeared to be simply his deranged mind in the beginning where dozens of "Jack Sparrows" appeared to crew the ship in his solitary exile, but later the hallucinations grew more important and there were mainly two "Jacks" constantly arguing about which path to follow: the immortality or the mortality. The last hallucination took place while Jack was imprisoned on the Dutchman, where his honest streak won. By the end of At World's End, Sparrow is sailing to the Fountain of Youth, an early concept for the second film. Rossio said in 2007 that a fourth film was possible, and producer Jerry Bruckheimer expressed interest in a spin-off. Gore Verbinski concurred that "all of the stories set in motion by the first film have been resolved. If there ever were another Pirates of the Caribbean film, I would start fresh and focus on the further adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow." On Stranger Tides was first announced on September 28, 2008, during a Disney event at the Kodak Theatre. Verbinski did not return to direct the fourth installment and was replaced by Rob Marshall. The movie uses elements from Tim Powers' novel of the same name, particularly Blackbeard and the Fountain of Youth, but the film is not a straight adaptation of the novel. The fifth film, Dead Men Tell No Tales, was co-directed by Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg. Johnny Depp Looking to do a family film, Johnny Depp visited the Walt Disney Studios in 2001 when he heard of plans to adapt the Pirates of the Caribbean ride into a film. Depp was excited by the possibility of reviving an old Hollywood genre, and found the script met his quirky sensibilities: the crew of the Black Pearl were not in search of treasure but trying to return it to lift a curse on them, and the traditional mutiny had already occurred. Depp was cast on June 10, 2002. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer felt Depp would give the film an edge that could draw teenage and adult audiences despite Disney's reputation for soft children's fare. According to various reports and interviews, Johnny Depp prepared for the role while rehearsing in the steam room of a sauna. At times, he claimed to turn the heat up to its max temperature of 1,000 degrees. The actor was quoted as saying, "Captain Jack was actually born in a sauna—my sauna. I figured this is a guy who has been on the high seas for probably all of his life, the majority of his life at least, and therefore probably dealt with a lot of inescapable heat to the brain." Depp also said, due to his daughter Lily-Rose Depp being three years old at the time, he watched various cartoons, using Tex Avery and Wile E. Coyote as examples. At the first read-through, Depp surprised the cast and crew by portraying the character in an off-kilter manner. He researched 18th-century pirates and, seeing parallels with modern rock stars, modeled his performance on Keith Ri.... Discover the Ian Nathan popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Ian Nathan books.