aug 9, 2013 - TELEGRAPH Behind the scenes on The Lone Ranger Johnny Depp FEATURE

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It is one o’clock in the morning and Johnny Depp has just hopped off his horse and is standing in front of me, his face covered in cracked white paint, black stripes running down his cheeks. A black stuffed crow sits on his head. He looks almost unrecognisable but the eyes and the voice are unmistakably his.

“I’m so used to it, I sleep in it,” he jokes of the make-up he wears for his role as Tonto in the much talked-about Disney remake of The Lone Ranger. “Have you seen the set?” he asks, motioning around at the quixotic town constructed in the last few weeks in the middle of the New Mexican desert. “I want to move in: I would like to live here now.”

Sleeping in his make-up and living on set might have been two ways to ensure the movie, which is based on the popular Thirties radio show and later television series, actually reached completion. Although Depp signed up for the role five years ago, reuniting with Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, the project has been fraught with setbacks and budgetary difficulties – at one point it was called off altogether.

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