The photo at left shows Johnny Depp as he appeared at the Alice in Wonderland Ultimate Fan Event held at the Hollywood & Highland Center’s Central Courtyard today. Johnny and director Tim Burton were interviewed backstage–the interviews were streamed on MySpace–and then came out briefly to greet the crowd, which had been entertained by musical artists featured on the “Almost Alice” CD. Johnny expressed his gratitude to the crowd, many of whom showed up in Alice-inspired costumes: “The fact that these people come to support us in this way . . . it proves that the only reason we’re still working is because of them, so we’re very, very excited.”

Asked to explain his “inspiration” for the Mad Hatter, Johnny replied: “The Hatter kind of came from . . . certainly, the information that’s there in [Lewis] Carroll’s works, which is magnificent. He sort of came from . . . for me, it was the idea of all of us, the idea of the extreme sides of our personality: the extreme sides of our rage, the extreme sides of our sadness, the extreme sides of our levity. So it was like . . . for me, I looked at the Hatter as a kind of human mood ring, if you will.”

The Zone thanks AnaMaria for sharing the live feed of the Ultimate Fan Event and Theresa for video clips and screencaps. To see a larger version of our screencap of Johnny Depp’s MySpace interview, CLICK HERE, and to see a screencap of Johnny with Tim Burton, CLICK HERE. You can read much more about the Ultimate Fan Event on the Zone’s forums.