10 Weird Early Appearances By Iconic Film Characters

8. Bill Murray's Raoul Duke

Nobody got Hunter S Thompson better than Johnny Depp. After a long time spent languishing in development hell, a film adaptation of the gonzo journalist's most famous work, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, finally saw the light of day in 1998 thanks to former Monty Python star Terry Gilliam placed firmly in the director's chair. Gilliam had the visual aplomb to bring Ralph Steadman's surreal illustrations to life, as well as recreating the drug-fuelled hallucinations of main character Raoul Duke (and obvious analogue for Thompson) as he travels to the city of sin to document a drag race, or something. The machinations of the plot aren't really what matters, in the book or the film, it's the characters: Benicio del Toro puts in one of his best performances as Dr Gonzo, the monstrous attorney pal of Duke, but it's Johnny Depp who steals the show by putting forth a note-perfect imitation of the famously eccentric Hunter S Thompson, right down to copying his mannerisms and shaving his head. To get in character Depp basically lived with the real-life Thompson for a few years, eventually becoming good friends with him. It's hard to imagine anybody but Depp in the role now (especially since he sorta reprised it in recent Thompson adaptation The Rum Diary), but Fear And Loathing wasn't the first time "Raoul Duke" had appeared in cinemas. In fact he debuted in 1980's Where The Buffalo Roam, a much more scattershot biopic that drew on a bunch of Thompson works, which starred Everybody Loves Raymond's Peter Boyle as Dr Gonzo and Bill Murray as Duke/Thompson. Murray also palled around with the man himself before making the film, and certainly looked the part, but he didn't quite manage the heights of Depp. Plus the film is a total mess, a weird historical curio that Thompson himself even distanced himself from.