Ed Wood

Edward Davis "Ed" Wood, Jr. (October 10, 1924 – December 10, 1978) was an American filmmaker, actor, and author.

In the 1950s, Wood made a number of low-budget films in the science fiction, comedy, and horror genres, intercutting stock footage. In the 1960s and 1970s, he made sexploitation movies and wrote over 80 pulp crime, horror and sex novels. In 1980, he was posthumously awarded a Golden Turkey Award as Worst Director of All Time, renewing public interest in his work. Wood's career and camp approach has earned him and his films a cult following.

Following the publication of Rudolph Grey's 1992 oral biography Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr., Wood's life and work have undergone a public rehabilitation of sorts, leading up to director Tim Burton's biopic of Wood's life, Ed Wood (1994), a critically acclaimed film starring Johnny Depp as Wood that earned two Academy Awards.

Early years

Wood's father, Edward Sr., worked for the U.S. Postal Service as a custodian, and his family relocated numerous times around the United States. Eventually, they settled in Poughkeepsie, New York, where Ed Wood, Jr. was born in 1924. According to Wood's second wife, Kathy O'Hara, Wood's mother Lillian would dress him in girl's clothing when he was a child because she had always wanted a daughter. For the rest of his life, Wood was a heterosexual crossdresser, infatuated with the feel of angora on his skin.

Johnny Depp

John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II (born June 9, 1963) is an American actor, producer, and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor. He rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol.

Since then, Depp has taken on challenging and "larger-than-life" roles, starting with a supporting role in Oliver Stone's Vietnam War film Platoon in 1986, then playing the title character in the romantic dark fantasy Edward Scissorhands (1990). He later found box office success in the fantasy adventure film Sleepy Hollow (1999), the fantasy swashbuckler film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) and its sequels, the musical adventure film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), the fantasy film Alice in Wonderland (2010) and voicing the title character in the animated action comedy western Rango (2011). He has collaborated on eight films with director and friend Tim Burton.

Depp is regarded as one of the world's biggest film stars. He has gained worldwide critical acclaim for his portrayals of such people as screenwriter-director Ed Wood in Ed Wood, undercover FBI agent Joseph D. Pistone in Donnie Brasco, "gonzo" journalist Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, cocaine kingpin George Jung in Blow, author J. M. Barrie in Finding Neverland, and the Depression Era outlaw John Dillinger in Michael Mann's Public Enemies. Films featuring Depp have grossed over $3.1 billion at the United States box office and over $7.6 billion worldwide. His most commercially successful films are the Pirates of the Caribbean films, which have grossed $3 billion; Alice in Wonderland which grossed $1 billion; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which grossed $474 million; and The Tourist which grossed $278 million worldwide.