“I feel a bit like an alter ego of Modigliani. I infused a lot of my experiences into this character and I worked on the script several times. Just like him, I faced difficult moments, but I always found a way out.” So declared Johnny Depp today in Rome during a private meeting in a hotel, arriving about an hour late after canceling his participation in the official meeting scheduled at the Auditorium at 2 pm. There had been talk of a possible delay related to flight problems.

Depp mentions the painter from Livorno because he is presenting the film ‘Modì - Three Days on the Wings of Madness’ at the Rome Film Festival, which recounts the seventy-two most tumultuous hours in the life of Amedeo Modigliani, played by Riccardo Scamarcio. The plot follows an artist on the run from the Parisian police, undecided whether to leave the French capital forever, while his bohemian friends, including Maurice Utrillo and Chaïm Soutine (played respectively by Bruno Gouery and Ryan McParland), together with his muse Beatrice Hastings (Antonia Desplat), persuade him to stay. In this period of both artistic and personal crisis, Modigliani seeks help from the art dealer Léopold Zborowski (Stephen Graham) and meets the collector Maurice Gangnat (Al Pacino). The cast also includes Luisa Ranieri in the role of the cook and model Rosalia Tobia.

Depp returns to the director’s chair 25 years after his debut with ‘The Brave’ in 1997 and worked from a script written by Jerzy and Mary Kromolowski, inspired by Dennis McIntyre’s 1980 play ‘Modigliani’. During the meeting with journalists, the actor opened up by saying: “I plan to make two more films as an actor and two as a director. Among the projects there is also that of playing Satan in a Terry Gilliam film, while Jeff Bridges will play God. I can say that I have been lucky in my career; after 40 years I still find girls waiting for me everywhere. I have had a better life than I could have imagined. If I had not achieved success, I probably would have become an unbearable person”.

Scamarcio commented: “This Modigliani is definitely a reflection of Johnny Depp. He is a lively, anarchic and light-hearted character, but at the same time he has a certain purity; in short, there are traits that resemble me”. Regarding his experience with Al Pacino on the set, he added: “When I read the first version of the script in Budapest, I didn’t know who would play the art dealer. When I found out, I was shocked. I spent a day with Al Pacino and it’s clear that he is a legend of cinema. I had a scene with him that lasted twenty-seven pages and only an hour to prepare it. In our conversation, I understood that we share the same vision of cinema and acting”. Scamarcio then underlined how his character