Of all the instructions I’ve been given in my career, this was the most peculiar, not to mention demanding.

Johnny Depp is writing music with Steven Tyler.

Disney's latest blockbuster "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" premieres at London’s Westfield on 12 May and, thanks to Spanish carmaker SEAT, you could be there!

What's it like be a 15-year-old playing a pirate in a Hollywood blockbuster alongside Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz?

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck follows up The Lives of Others with a romantic tribute to the kind of glamorous crime caper which Cary Grant starred in 50 years ago.

This glacially paced suspense thriller valiantly tries to be some sort of antidote to the frenetic Jason Bourne films, with an emphasis on style, insouciance and wit over action; only Julian Fellowes's script isn't terribly funny.

The first 20 minutes of this are among the funniest and most brilliant of any animated movie I've seen. Johnny Depp voices, superbly, a hapless bulging-eyed chameleon named Rango who stumbles upon authority after lying – with his forked tongue – about an heroic past as a gunslinger. The drought-afflicted desert town of Dirt makes him their sheriff, though it's a poisoned chalice given that the place is actually run by a wily old tortoise who sounds (and looks) like John Huston. The script, by John Logan, unfolds a classic Western tale that leans heavily on the plot of Chinatown. Gore Verbinski and his visual consultant Roger Deakins work marvels, both in the animal characterisation and the parched desert scrubland where most of it takes place. What children will make of in-jokes about Hunter S Thompson and Clint Eastwood is anyone's guess, but they should enjoy the magnificent setpieces – one chase involving a giant metal-beaked hawk is priceless – while Johnny Depp's puckish, free-associating spiel has an eccentric charm all of its own. It's one of his greatest roles.

Johnny Depp has splashed out on an £8.5 million home in Venice after falling in love with the city during filming last year.

As one British star used the Golden Globes to bolster his reputation for charm and dignity, another was intent on pricking as many egos as possible.

I'm normally a stickler for not getting into the festive swing of things until I'm drunk on Christmas Eve and on the cusp of crying at practically anything. By then I'm usually surrounded by people I was at school with, and my London tough girl act has slipped as much as my make-up. "Whaddayou mean you'll buy me a drink?" I blub at faces I dimly recall laughing at me as I fruitlessly tried to whack a rounders ball back to them 10 years ago. "Whaddayou mean a bottle of wine is only four pounds?" I wail. "Let me buy you one!" And so on.