Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)

“Especially Jack Sparrow,” Hollander continues, “who in Beckett’s view is naughty, messy, has dreadlocks, could do with a few more baths and, worst of all, is a pirate. To Cutler Beckett, Jack Sparrow is a stray dog.”

Stellan Skarsgård, who has been a major star in his native Sweden since the 1970s and has become an international player of considerable reputation and abilities, was pleased to be asked by Verbinski and Bruckheimer to portray Bootstrap Bill Turner…a character much discussed in “The Curse of the Black Pearl” but heretofore unseen. Skarsgård was well known to Bruckheimer, who had previously cast the actor as a marauding Teutonic in “King Arthur.” “Stellan is a world-class actor,” says Bruckheimer, “and Johnny and Orlando wanted to work with him. We knew that with Bootstrap Bill, Stellan would create a wonderful, compassionate and interesting portrait of a man who’s losing himself bit by bit.”

“You could see in the first film that there was a lot of space for the actors to expand and bloom within scenes,” says Skarsgård. “You also felt like they had a lot of fun doing it, which is very endearing.” Another compelling new character in DEAD MAN’S CHEST, the mysterious Caribbean soothsayer Tia Dalma, is essayed by one of Britain’s brightest young talents, Naomie Harris. “Tia Dalma’s a gypsy queen, a free spirit, someone who has magic powers and the ability to see through people and understand their deepest desires,” explains Harris. “She’s a very powerful woman, which I really like. She has associations with the elements of nature, and she’s fiery and temperamental.”

David Schofield, the noted British character actor cast as Mercer, Lord Cutler Beckett’s merciless enforcer, was delighted at the prospect of working with Keira Knightley. The last time he had seen her in person was when she was three years old, and Schofield was performing on stage at the Chichester (England) Festival with her father, actor Will Knightley. Schofield was also amazed at how many of his countrymen (and -women) were to be performing in the second “Pirates” film. “It’s like there are all these English theater actors being floated on a very luxurious Walt Disney mattress to exotic places. And they can chat away happily about their English lives and their English feelings about things. But they’re supported by this American structure. It’s a bit like an English glove with an American hand in it.”

Then there are the returnees who have come back to take yet another fantastic voyage on the Black Pearl. “I never expected to be back,” says Jonathan Pryce, who indeed is back as Port Royal Governor Weatherby Swann, Elizabeth’s loving if slightly befuddled father. Having missed all of the original screenings and premieres of the first film because of his busy schedule, Pryce finally bought himself a ticket to a cinema in London, “and could barely get a seat, which I thought was ironic. It was four or five weeks after its initial opening, but the cinema was packed. It was a wonderful experience seeing the film with a real audience, watching them laughing and watching the screen in amazement. It was very gratifying to be in a commercial film that audience, young and old, responded to so well.”

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