Last night Johnny Depp made an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, in part to play with and support Bill Carter & the Blame who performed their song Anything Made of Paper.
While he was there he told Dave about the near death encounter he had on the set of The Lone Ranger.
“We were shooting at a different place in the desert where there’s these little bumps and things,” Depp, wearing layers of scarves and his signature brimmed hat, told Letterman. “And so the horse that I was on decided to jump a couple of these little obstacles. The horse was unaware that the saddle I was wearing to sit on top of it was jury-rigged, kind of faked … to give the effect that I’m riding bareback. So basically it’s not very tight on the horse. So when we came down, the saddle slipped and I went to the left and had the reins here and somehow had the wherewithal to grab the mane of the horse. All very calm for some reason, I figured that fear would kick in but it didn’t. I was waiting,” he said laughing.
“All I saw in front of my eyes were these very muscular horse legs and striations of muscles moving, this kind of death machine. One word popped into my head: Hooves. Mind the hooves.”
“Will I go with the beast until someone wrangles it or will I drop? You know, It’s a crapshoot,” the actor said of the decision he had to make in that moment.
“And what did you choose?,” Letterman asked.
“I dropped,” Depp said. “It landed on my back, hit the deck pretty hard and the one thing that saved me was the horse’s instinct to lift his front legs and go over me, step over me. Had he not, it was coming straight down into the head.”
Before he left the Late Show studio, Johnny took time to sing autographs for most of the fans waiting outside, despite the frigid temperatures. One of our contributors, Denise, was there and said, “when he was leaving, more people [had] showed up and that’s when they closed the street and it got crazy. Johnny lived up to his ‘best autographer’ title because he started at one end and circled almost the entire line, stopping in front of every person! Security made him stop before he got to the very end, though. It was so cold & windy that his hat blew off at one point, but he kept signing!”
Denise also has a good tip fro staying warm in these situations, – heat warmer inserts for your hands and feet. She added that they “saved” her.
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Love and admire Mr. Depp for more reasons then I can name…
Ditto.
I admire him for being so talented,so good people and so good looking!!! I love you Johnny!
Check the web site link above for a few more pictures of Johnny Depp, Bill Carter, Bruce Witkin, Damien Echols, and Lorri Davis-Echols outside The Ed Sullivan Theater on 21-Feb-2013 after taping The Late Show with David Letterman.