Johnny Depp is on the cover of Vanity Fair's December issue. The Oscar-nominated actor talked with rock legend Patti Smith (!) for the cover feature. In it, he reveals why Angelina Jolie reminds him of Elizabeth Taylor ("she is incredibly normal, and has a wonderfully kind of dark, perverse sense of humor"), what advice Marlon Brando gave him (study Shakespeare—and then tackle Hamlet), and, most interestingly, that while filming the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, Disney executives thought he was ruining the movie with his daring characterization of Captain Jack:

"They couldn't stand him. They just couldn't stand him," Depp says of Disney's reaction to his controversial interpretation of Sparrow. "I think it was Michael Eisner, the head of Disney at the time, who was quoted as saying, 'He's ruining the movie.' Depp reveals to Smith, however, that he remained unfazed by the studio's hysteria. "Upper-echelon Disney-ites, going, What's wrong with him? Is he, you know, like some kind of weird simpleton? Is he drunk? By the way, is he gay?... And so I actually told this woman who was the Disney-ite... 'But didn't you know that all my characters are gay?' Which really made her nervous."

Read the full story at Vanity Fair.