Other Titles • Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) • Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Treasures of the Lost Abyss • Dead Man's Chest • Pirates of the Caribbean 2 • Rummty II • P.O.T.C 2 • Pirates 2 • P.O.T.C. 2
(Coincidentally, Jack Davenport’s father—the distinguished British stage and screen actor Nigel Davenport—was one of the stars of Alexander Mackendrick’s “A High Wind in Jamaica,” made some 40 years ago and one of the best examples of the genre before it vanished from theater screens.)
One by one, Bruckheimer and Verbinski began to assemble the major players of a huge cast, including new characters which add so much new life and texture to DEAD MAN’S CHEST. To portray Davy Jones, who is as much sea creature as he is human, the filmmakers selected the extraordinarily versatile British actor Bill Nighy, knowing that he would find the humanity beneath the character’s beastly veneer. “Davy Jones is a deeply damaged and isolated individual,” says Nighy. “He’s wounded so deeply that he determines that he will live a kind of semi-life, as long as it means he doesn’t have to feel anything anymore. And so, he’s torn out the center of all feeling—his heart—and locks it in a special chest. He also has control of a ‘pet,’ as it’s sometimes referred to, which is the Kraken—a sea monster which is the likes of which you’ve never seen before, entirely malevolent, evil and powerful beyond expression. If you possess Davy Jones’ heart, you control not only him, but the Kraken as well, which in effect gives you control of the oceans.”
Nighy’s primary challenge would be that because of Davy Jones’ astonishing physical appearance, he would be acting throughout the film in what resembles a gray track suit and matching cap with reference marks for Industrial Light & Magic’s computer wizards, who would embellish it with the amazing details as imagined by Gore Verbinski and famed conceptual artist Mark “Crash” McCreery. But Nighy was game to take it on. “The first movie was not only successful,” he notes, “but is actually beloved, and has entered the language in a way that I think few movies do. To be part of this was a very satisfying notion. As for playing a character which will be physically embellished by computer wizardry, as an actor you use your imagination. The same things are required of you, generally speaking.
“Of course,” adds Nighy dryly, “in DEAD MAN’S CHEST I’m playing a man who has an octopus growing out of my chin, which I must admit, has thus far been outside of my experience.”
The other new villain of DEAD MAN’S CHEST—perhaps even more villainous than Davy Jones, whose viciousness stems from his all-too-human heartbreak from a thwarted love from the past—is the cold, calculating and utterly ruthless Lord Cutler Beckett. Invited to inhabit this dastardly soul was Tom Hollander, who so brilliantly portrayed Reverend Collins, the diminutive and hapless suitor of Keira Knightley’s Elizabeth Bennet, in “Pride & Prejudice.” Hollander was attracted to playing Beckett because, like the other characters developed for both the first and second films, he was multi-dimensional. “Soft glove, hard fist,” notes the actor of his Beckett. “On the outside, he’s very arrogant and charming, but the inside is incredibly hard.” Hollander also saw some similarities between the East India Trading Company, as depicted in the story, and the modern world. “There’s a modern parallel to how Lord Cutler Beckett and the East India Company operates in the story, with the pirates—who symbolize absolute freedom—being squeezed out ruthlessly.
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