How Johnny Depp "Became" A Lizard

In Rango, Johnny Depp stars as an animated lizard.
He remembers getting deep into character with his director Gore Verbinski.

“Early on, some of the talks that Gore and I had had about the character I mean. Talk about two grown men, middle aged men discussing the possibility of one of them being a lizard. So it starts off on a surreal kind of note, anyway.”

Most animated movies have the actors record their lines one at a time in a sound booth. Instead, Verbinski got the whole cast together to act out the entire movie, while sound technicians recorded them.

“Ultimately, it was everything. However, the process that we did, that Gore created this sort of atmosphere that was really, truly ludicrous. I mean, just ridiculous. It was like just regional theater at its worst.”

Check out the video above to hear more about the inspiration of the animal flick.