Tim Burton and Johnny Depp on the set of Sweeney Todd Leah Gallo/Courtesy of DreamWorks

VIEW FILM STILLS: Sweeney Todd

Johnny Depp had little feature-film experience when he first met director Tim Burton in the late 1980s. The young actor had only one major role to his credit at the time: the 1984 horror flick Nightmare on Elm Street.

"I didn't know him," Burton recalls. "He had just done that [television] show 21 Jump Street, which I had never seen. I don't think he was very happy doing what he was doing, and he was just looking for something else. And I think he responded to the material in the same way; I think it spoke to him in a certain way. I don't think he wanted to do an eighth or ninth season of 21 Jump Street."

At the time, Burton sought a lead for Edward Scissorhands, an offbeat comedy of unique outré quirkiness.

"And so I met him," the director says, "and I thought it was interesting because I just connected with him. He [was] somebody who was known. He was on the cover of Tiger Beat magazine, all this sort of stuff. And that was not what he is all about — he doesn't feel that way inside. So he just seemed pretty much like the character of Edward. He matched the emotional conflict with the character."

Their connection was immediate, and Burton cast Depp as the eccentric outsider with the razor-sharp hands, a decision that was to alter both of their moviemaking careers. Depp would shed his teen-heartthrob image to pursue the existential, oddball-romantic-yet-melancholic characters that were to define both his on- and off-screen personae. And in Depp, Burton recognized a fellow misfit, who, despite an interest in the cult fringes of society, would maintain a mass appeal. Their collaboration would spawn several movies that would both triumph (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and flounder at the box office (Ed Wood).

Having made five films together, Burton and Depp now return with perhaps their most ambitious partnership: an adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler Broadway smash, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Tim Burton is now in the unique position of being the go-to guy in Hollywood for bizarre fairy-tale escapes, fantastical comedies, and gory-yet-fun horror flicks. His films have grossed well in excess of a billion dollars — but success did not initially come easily. After high school, Burton studied animation for a couple of years before landing a job at the Walt Disney Studios in the 1980s.