Like the late Michael Jackson, Karl Malden was raised in Gary, Indiana - but managed to live for almost twice as long.

In 1952, he won the Oscar for best actor in a supporting role for A Streetcar Named Desire, winning a second nomination three years later for On The Waterfront.

In the 1970s, he reinvented himself as Det Lt Mike Stone in more than 100 episodes of The Streets of San Francisco.

It's worth noting that Malden began working on this series when he was 60, which illustrates just what older stars can achieve - and what has been lost with Michael Jackson's premature death.

Rest in peace, Karl. And thanks for the memories.

At just turned 46, he's the right age to play the last ten years of the late star's career.

Not sure if Johnny can do the dances, but if he's an actor who is still interested in challenging himself, why not try?

Maybe we'll find out next week if he would fancy playing the title role in Wacko Jacko - The Movie.

He'll be in London on Tuesday ready to meet my colleague Roz Laws.

Through Roz, that means he'll be talking to the Mail next Friday about the release of his new movie, Michael Mann's Public Enemies.

He's the biggest star that even we have had the chance to meet for a while, so how could I refuse her the chance to drool?

I met Johnny myself just before Sleepy Hollow became the first major film release of the new millennium in January 2000.

As you'd expect, he was very relaxed and charming. And, of course, not bad looking.

Click here to read my feature - and how Johnny Depp has a surprisingly close link, by association through his work, with Birmingham. Let's call it two degrees of separation...

NOTE: This feature was first published in the Birmingham Mail on January 7, 2000.... it was long before Pirates of the Caribbean etc but, clearly, here was a man sensibly going out of his way to avoid the pitfalls of being another Michael Jackson, so better now to play him?

FAME doesn't sit easily on Johnny Depp's slender shoulders which are now touched by an impressively thick mane of hair for a man of 36.

It struck him most powerfully after a teen cop TV series called 21 Jump Street turned him into a product.

For years he veered heavily away from anything which might have made him the world's biggest star on top of the recognition from his peers that he's also the best thirtysomething around.

From his debut in A Nightmare In Elm Street back in 1984, which became a much bigger hit than anyone expected, he hasn't exactly been seen in a string of blockbusters.

Private Resort, Platoon, Cry-Baby, Arizona Dream, Benny & Jon, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Ed Wood, Don Juan DeMarco, Nick Of Time, Dead Man, Donnie Brasco, The Brave, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas and his most latest bomb The Astronaut's Wife have all honed his talents rather than earned millions for studios.

A decade ago, Edward Scissorhands marked his talent out for real. In a strikingly original fable, he played a man-made boy whose creator (Vincent Price) died before he finished his hands.

Now Johnny is back in the big time, reunited with Scissorhands' director Tim Burton for the third time after Ed Wood also won universal critical acclaim but surprisingly flopped beyond all expectations.

And, as the squeamishly eccentric constable Ichabod Crane in the first big film of the year 2000, SLEEPY HOLLOW (15), he's working with another veteran horror star - Christopher Lee.

Last year, Lee said Depp was the leading actor of his generation, if not the best of all time. How does Johnny react to such praise?

'Nervous,' he says after pausing for thought. 'That's one enormous compliment. I don't know how to react to that, except that if an actor really starts to buy into all of that stuff and is totally and completely satisfied with his work, then it's all over for him because you have nothing to reach for, nothing to push against.

'You then become complacent and only do something because Formula 'A' works.'

Johnny says challenging all of that is very stimulating - and in that respect he doesn't even regard himself as a movie star.

'That's reserved for other people. I just see myself as an actor, if that. A guy with a strange job.

'When 21 Jump Street took off I was so terrified of becoming a major product for a corporation.

'It was horrifying. I had not control over anything. They sold me down the river as this thing and it just wasn't me.

'You go from struggling to everything happening at 200mph and there is nothing to grab on to. There's no foundation, no reality and I swore that they would never play that game with me ever again.

'I've been really lucky - because I still get work!'

Sleepy Hollow will certainly ensure he stays off the dole queue. It's been a big hit in America and this effective Hammer Horror tribute deserves to be a British smash, too.

Why make something so obviously commercial after all that's gone before?

'I just wanted to work with Tim again,' he says. 'So just hopped up. I thought we could do a new version of a classic leading man - and then twist it round.

'I saw Ichabod as a facade of stoicism but also a crumbling, pre-pubescent very fragile little girl.'

The film features lots of decapitations and creepy crawlies, but humour is always apparent in every scene.

Though Johnny himself admits to a fear of spiders, his biggest challenge was actually kissing his old mate Christina Ricci who plays the bewitching Katrina Van Tassell.

'She's still only 19 - and I've known her since she was nine, so that was... weird.' he says.

Depp speaks very quietly. He even asks permission if he can smoke - 'I'm glad I'm not in America right now' - and is hypnotically handsome.

Currently sporting a goatee beard and pencil slim moustache, he looks as if he could ride off with the Three Musketeers at any time.

There's a cumbersome-looking silver ring on the third finger of each hand and a couple of small tattoos in odd places, too.

Johnny once said: 'Feet are fascinating, don't you think? They tell you so much about people'.

Today, he's wearing suede shoes that are at once very heavily scuffed yet still stylish.

His jeans and grey denim shirt might look new, but his shoes tell me he likes to be grounded in old favourites. A wild man of Hollywood? No, surely here's a sensitive soul who just likes to have faith in things he can trust.

Born in Owensboro, Kentucky - a place relatively unfamiliar in Britain which makes it that much harder to pin him down - Johnny played in a rock group called The Kids before turning to acting.

After a divorce and engagements to actresses Sherilyn Fenn, Jennifer Grey and Winona Ryder, plus another failed liaison with model Kate Moss, he is currently making his home in Paris with singer Vanessa and their seven-month old daughter Lily Rose.

His new-found domesticity seems to have gone him good.

When he was a mere uncle to the children of his sisters and brother he used to fear the apparent fragility of babies.

Now he talks lovingly of changing nappies and of how he now hates being away from his bairn.

There's even bombshell for his fans. 'I don't want to work! And I wouldn't want to be away from her for any substantial length of time at this stage in her life. I would have a breakdown, just go ape.'

Having grown up watching Monty Python, Johnny has a well developed British sense of humour.

One of his favourite tricks is to use a tiny 'wind' machine to surprise people.

'When I was with Marlon Brando (Don Juan DeMarco) I told him I'd had some bad food on an aeroplane,' he recalls.

'I kept letting this machine off in my fingers every ten seconds and it kept Brando going for half an hour.

'He was on the verge of calling an ambulance for me.

'Even if I was only an extra or got one line, I would love to star in The Fast Show and have had dinner with Paul Whitehouse. I think he is one of your finest actors.

'A lot of my American friends don't get the humour, but I love it. It's so quick.'

Johnny loves England, too, and might one day even live here having enjoyed his long months working on Sleepy Hollow at Leavesden and Shepperton Studios.

'British technicians are really funny and clever and quick," he says.

'There's is a smart humour. I was really shocked by that.

'I also went on a drive down to Rye in Sussex - it's really beautiful countryside down there.

'I'm not sure I can stay in any one place for too long, though, certainly not a big city without going a little nuts and feeling a bit claustrophobic.'

TIM BURTON'S Sleepy Hollow has been adapted from the classic short story The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving.

New York born, he was the first American to earn a living from writing, but his most famous creation - Rip Van Winkle - was actually written in Birmingham while the rest of his household slept.

Irving was the youngest of 11 children born to a couple who emigrated from England to America in the great exodus of the late 18th Century.

At the age of 21, in 1804, he decided to visit his sister and brother-in-law - boyhood friend Henry Van Wart - in Birmingham and soon emabarked on his first visits round Warwick, Kenilworth and Stratford.

Ten years later he came back and efffectively launched the ongoing American tourist invasion of Stratford by compiling The Stratford Sketch from his regular base at the Red Horse Hotel on Bridge Street - sadly replaced by a Marks & Spencer store 20 years ago.

Irving wrote Rip Van Winkle and Bracebridge Hall (considered to refer to Aston Hall) while he was recovering from illness and staying with the Van Warts at 13 Calthrope Street (now Road) in Edgbaston, during one of his many visits.

Co-starring Megan Fox, the film is 149 minutes long and as loud as hell.

Shia LaBeouf returns as Sam Witwicky - what a daft name! - who is caught in the war between the Autobots and the evil Decepticons.

With the ancient origins of the Transformers revealed thanks to a vision sent by the Allspark, Sam becomes a target for the baddies.

The Decepticons have returned to Earth under the command of the formidable Starscream.

Optimus Prime forms an alliance with international armies to help the Autobots to protect the humankind.

But which cinemas are showing it first and which one will have it last? Click here to see my exclusive guide to who's showing it when and where.

Or you could do it the easy way and see it after breakfast.

Recently refurbished at a cost of £2 million, the on the ball Odeon New Street in the heart of Birmingham city centre has it first from 10.15am on Friday morning.

Vue's first screening is at 10.30am, just like Cineworld Broad Street.

AMC Broadway Plaza and Showcases Erdington, Coventry, Dudley and Walsall don't get going till 11am.

Empire Great Park waits till 11.45am while Solihull Cineworld is surely missing a trick by not playing the film till 1pm followed by Dudley Odeon (Merry Hill) at 1.30pm.

The Sutton Coldfield Empire even more so at 1.45pm, followed by Tamworth Odeon at 2pm.

IMAX at Millennium Point has three screenings on Friday at 5pm, 8pm (sold out already) and 11pm, while the Electric Cinema on Station Street currently has no plans to show it despite having gone with Terminator Salvation right from its June 3 previews.

So, wherever you choose to see the film, enjoy the noise and extraordinary visual spectacle.

Don't forget I'll be reviewing the standard version of film in the Birmingham Mail on Friday.

Because it takes hours to make up an IMAX print and Millennium Point is getting late delivery, I'll be reporting back here on Friday night with news of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - The Imax Experience to see how it compares with watching it at the flagship Odeon Leicester Square.

On Monday in London, director Michael Bay was telling me he's very excited about the IMAX version which includes sequences shot on IMAX cameras.

Anyone who saw The Dark Knight at Millennium Point will understand what that does to a movie's sweet spots. I can't wait, can you?