This piracy is rooted in rock ‘n’ roll

If Johnny Depp wins the best actor Academy Award tonight for his eccentric role in “Pirates of the Caribbean,” Rolling Stone Keith Richards will have plowed an improbable furrow in filmdom. Rarely has a pop-culture icon been so nakedly channeled to create a successful film role. The closest comparison may be the way Tony Curtis’ character appropriated Cary Grant’s voice to impress Marilyn Monroe in Billy Wilder’s “Some Like It Hot.”

Richards, known for posting a skull-and-crossbones sign over his dressing room door during world tours, has this response to the way Depp’s been telling the world he based his roguish, off-kilter Captain Jack Sparrow on Richards’ wasted-life, road-weary persona.

“I don’t play a pirate,” Richards laughs over the telephone from a vacation home. “I am one!”

Richards, two months past his 60th birthday and still rocking, has been around long enough to have the last laugh on just about everybody. (There’s an old rock-fan joke that the only thing left standing after World War III will be cockroaches and Richards.) But Depp’s acceptance speech could be yet another giggle in the guitarist’s future.

“I thought it was great,” said Richards, who said Depp gave him the pirate’s coat and scarf he wore in the movie. “I could laugh at myself. It was like a pirate movie....To me it was interesting they could carry the thing all the way through.”

Depp’s Sparrow possessed many of the quirks that have made Richards a worshiped figure among older rock fans: a certain emaciated, tipsy, slurred-speech presence; a certain feminine grace (Sparrow wears Richards’ trademark headband and black eyeliner), counterbalanced by a swaggering smile and an unflagging ability to deliver the goods onstage. Sparrow calls someone “love,” one critic wrote, at exactly the moment Richards would call him “cat.”

Depp, 40, grew up idolizing Richards. He first came to Hollywood as the lead guitarist in an aspiring rock band and, once he morphed into a successful actor, bought half-interest in the Viper Room on Sunset Boulevard. He maintains a collection of guitars that Richards praises for their elegance.

As Depp promoted the film last summer, he routinely gushed like any fan. “I sort of thought that pirates would be the rock ‘n’ roll stars of the 18th century,” he said in a July interview. “And when you think of rock ‘n’ roll stars, the greatest rock ‘n’ roll star of all time, the coolest rock ‘n’ roll star of all time in my opinion, is Keith Richards, hands down.”

Depp took pains to tell interviewers that his performance was not an imitation of Richards, but a “salute ... a tribute” to him.

Richards said he and Depp met at some sort of function that Richards no longer recalls, except that they enjoyed each other’s company. “We don’t get to see each other a lot but we hang a lot when we do.

“He informed me of what he was doing. He told me, ‘I sort of hung [Sparrow’s character] on you.’ I said, ‘That’s why you’re buying all the dinners.’ ”

Richards said Depp caught the Stones on the road several times before shooting began, but never discussed the methods he was using to capture Richards. “He didn’t say anything until he was doing the PR thing.”

Stones singer Mick Jagger, 60, who has known Richards since the pair were 10, hasn’t weighed in, but the band is gathering in France next week to discuss a possible fall tour, “and I’ll probably get a snide comment,” Richards said.

In watching “Pirates of the Caribbean,” casual rock fans will miss many of the subtleties of Depp’s performance because Richards, and his mannerisms, have so often been eclipsed by Stones frontman Jagger. (Solution: Rent director Taylor Hackford’s “Hail Hail Rock ‘n’ Roll,” his 1987 documentary about Chuck Berry in which Richards is captured producing a concert tribute.)

Some rock experts have contended Depp was capturing the younger Keith as Sparrow instead of the contemporary Keith. Richards will have none of it.

“Old Keith or youth Keith, I ain’t that much different,” he says with a laugh.