Johnny Depp on his journey to the dark side in new film Black Mass

IT’S a relief to meet Johnny Depp and hear him say a friendly “hello”.

For two hours previous, I’d seen his portrayal of James “Whitey” Bulger, a gangland kingpin and IRA supporter who rose to prominence in his native Boston with the help of the FBI.

Bulger was a violent sociopath with little moral conscience and Depp is very convincing in the role, both visually and emotionally.

To stare into his ice blue eyes on screen you get a sense of what it must have been like to be caught in Bulger’s gaze, not knowing if his next move would be to break into a grin or beat you with a baseball bat.

“It was very important to look as much like Bulger as humanly possible,” says 52-year-old Depp.

“My eyeballs are black as the ace of spades, so the blue contacts I wore were hand-painted because they needed to be piercing they needed to cut right through you.”

The brother of the president of the Massachusetts State Senate, Bulger earned notoriety beyond Boston in 1995 when it was revealed he was an FBI informant.

However, it was also revealed he’d been given leeway by Special Agent John Connolly, a fellow South Boston resident and friend, to conduct his affairs as he saw fit, “with the exception of murder”, in return for information on the Mafia operating in the city.

This meant Bulger was able to rule South Boston without the impediment of criminal investigation while also removing his competitors on the North Boston crime scene.

“First and foremost, Jimmy Bulger is in his own mind and heart a man of honour,” Depp contends.

“His immediate response to Connolly is that he would never be a rat.

“But helping the FBI get the Italian Mafia is a business decision that, without question, works for him.

“I mean, if you’re offered that kind of clemency, you’re going to take it and he takes it and runs with it.

“He ends up giving the FBI very little and gets a lot in return, so it’s kind of brilliant on his part.”

Jimmy’s politician brother Billy is played by Benedict Cumberbatch.

Johnny says he and the Sherlock star “became like brothers,” off-screen to mirror the close fraternal relationship shared by the Bulger boys.

“Billy went his way and became a highfalutin politician and Jimmy went his way and ended up a king of the underworld.

“Yet they visited their mum and were a close family even though they were on distinctly different sides.”

Depp’s performance marks a return to form after box office flops with The Lone Ranger, Transcendence and the excruciatingly bad Mortdecai.

He has also fell foul of Australian authorities in May when visiting the country to film the latest instalment of The Pirates of the Caribbean.

Travelling with his new wife 29-year-old Aussie actress Amber Heard Johnny is alleged to have failed to declare his two Yorkshire terrier pets on arrival via private jet and has been charged with two counts of dog smuggling.

The matter was adjourned for a month in a Queensland court this week.

Heard has vowed never to return to her homeland again while Depp quipped that he had been forced to eat his dogs “under direct orders from a sweaty, big-gutted man from Australia”.

Meeting Johnny you are always left with the impression he’s innocently bemused by the world around him.

He asked to meet Bulger, now serving two terms of life imprisonment in a maximum security prison, ahead of filming and appears saddened that he turned him down. He believes there was good in him.

“I don’t believe he was a great fan of the book from which the film is adapted,” he bemoans.

“So I got a polite refusal sent through his attorney.

“But nobody, no matter how evil we would consider them, would look at themselves as evil.

“They’re on a quest and they feel what they’re doing is righteous.

“Jimmy was of proud Irish immigrant stock, he was loyal to his neighbourhood, was a great care-giver to his mother, very close with his brother and was an upper-echelon politician.

“There’s something poetic about what he was able to do.”