Pirates of the Caribbean: Stars spill behind-the-scenes stories from original movies

Set members on Pirates of the Caribbean have spilled the beans on what it was really like to work on the films. Photo / Getty

It's fourteen years since Pirates of the Caribbean first hit the big screen with Curse of the Black Pearl and launched a multibillion-dollar franchise.

The fifth instalment - Dead Men Tell No Tales - landed in cinemas over the weekend, collecting $382 million outside of the US and proving the series is undeniably popular all these years on.

To mark the new release, three of the original stars - Jack Davenport (Commodore James Norrington), Lee Arenberg (the hapless pirate villain - and David Bailie (mute pirate Cotton) opened up to Heat Vision with some behind-the-scenes stories from the 2003 film.

Here's what we found out from the interview:

Darth Vader taught them how to sword fight

The entire cast of pirates had to attend Pirates School, where they learned to fight by the late famed swordsman Bob Anderson - the lightsaber master who fought battles as Darth Vader in Star Wars.

Millions of dollars were spent on snacks

They were a hungry bunch on set - so hungry, in fact, that the catering for the crew on the first three movies along totalled about $2.7 million.

Jack Davenport claimed the craft services chef had told him the figure during filming.

"I remember saying to him one day 'What is your budget for all this?' He looked me square in the eye and said 'essentially unlimited.' I was like 'what does that mean?' He was like 'I don't know, $2 million [US].' I was like 'For snacks?' And he was like 'yeah?' That sounds frivolous but it wasn't. He obviously had to keep people fed."

Hundreds of mobile phones were dropped into the ocean

"There was a legendary speech the line producer, Eric McLeod, made at the end of the third movie about 'well, we've finished up shooting. The caterers prepared 170,000 meals. We bought like 700 cell phones and 240 of them went in the water. There was enough rope on this movie to go around Earth five times,'" Lee Arenberg told the publication.

"Stuff like that started to add up like you would have driven around the earth 120 times with all the fuel used. It resonates with you when you understand the magnitude of it ... Most people don't get an opportunity like that in the film business. We won't be making films like that very often."

An improve scene led to endless jars of free mayonnaise

Arenberg accidentally became an advocate for mayonnaise, thanks to an off-the-cuff remark he made on camera to Johnny Depp's character Jack Sparrow.

During a deleted scene in the first movie - which appears as extra footage on the DVD - Captain Jack is cornered by Arenberg's character Pintel.

"We were in the cave of Isla Muerta and I stop Johnny who says 'parlay' and say, 'Down to the depths with whatever mutt had thought of parlay' and Johnny goes 'That would be the French.'

"The scene was supposed to end after that, but they kept rolling, so Johnny and I started to get into this improv about the French and he starts saying something about mayonnaise and for my character I didn't know what else to say so I go 'I love mayonnaise,'" said Arenberg.

"Every fan for a year or two who would come get an autograph would bring me a jar of mayonnaise."