KEY POINTS:
He is a keen guitar player whose admiration for the Rolling Stones stretched to modelling his character pirate Jack Sparrow on the mannerisms of Keith Richards.
Now Pirates of the Caribbean star Johnny Depp is being lined up to play a rock star for real in a biopic
of the life of the late Queen frontman, Freddie Mercury.
Robert de Niro's company Tribeca Productions is said to be behind the project which Brian May, the Queen guitarist, confirmed was in development.
"Discussions are at an early stage," he said on his website.
May described Depp as "fantastic".
"He would be a worthy counterpart for Freddie on screen. I don't think I can say any more right now," he added.
De Niro has known Brian May and Queen's drummer Roger Taylor since they met at the Venice Film Festival in 1996 and ploughed his own money into their hit stage musical, We Will Rock You.
The musical was originally going to be about the band but the surviving members decided that would be too embarrassing for all involved.
"It would be too painful, too close, and a bit grand. It would be for somebody else to do, You can't supervise your own history," May said at the time.
Instead, Ben Elton, the comedy writer, devised a story that incorporated the band's back catalogue of songs.
When the finished work opened in London in 2002 after six years in development, De Niro attended the first night.
"It's an adventure. I've been involved in this for a long time. It went through a lot of stages and finally got to this stage - it's going to be terrific," he said.
The £7.5 million production, which is still running, is set in a future where musical instruments have been banned but a group of rebels go in search of mythical electric guitars.
But the proposed biopic would tell the life story of Mercury, who was born in Zanzibar in 1946 and died from complications of Aids in 1991, the day after confirming he had the disease.
His real name was Farrokh Bulsara but he adopted the name he was best known by at school in India where he grew up.
His family settled in England when he was in his teens.
He performed with several bands before co-founding Queen in 1971.
They signed to EMI a year later.
His distinctive voice, which ranged across four octaves, was a key factor in their success on songs such as Bohemian Rhapsody.
It lasted nearly six minutes and stayed at number one in the UK charts for nine weeks.
It has since been voted Britain's best single of all time by music fans in a Guinness Book of British Hit Singles poll, defeating John Lennon's Imagine and Hey Jude by the Beatles.
David Bowie, who recorded the song Under Pressure with Queen and performed at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert after he died, said Mercury could hold an audience in the palm of his hand.
"Of all the more theatrical rock performers, Freddie took it further than most. He took it over the edge. And, of course, I always admired a man who wears tights."
Although Mercury had a close girlfriend, Mary Austin, with whom he lived for several years and who inherited his estate, he was fairly open about his homosexuality.
He lived with Jim Hutton for the last six years of his life.
Speculation about his health was prompted by his haggard appearance at the 1990 British Phonographic Industry awards where accepted a lifetime achievement award.
But he repeatedly denied having Aids until November 1991 when he issued a statement confirming his HIV positive status.
He said: "My privacy has always been very special to me and I am famous for my lack of interviews. Please understand this policy will continue." He died less than 24 hours later.
- INDEPENDENT
