8 Movies With Seriously Insane Details You Didn't Notice

6. Johnny Depp Learned To Speak Near Fluent Vietnamese - Platoon (1986)

Platoon is considered a rather accurate portrait of what it might have been like to fight in the Vietnam war, given that the movie's director, Oliver Stone, actually fought in the Vietnam war. The film stars Charlie Sheen in the central role, though there's a large ensemble cast to be had, including talented actors such as Willem Dafoe, Forest Whittaker, John C. McGinley and Johnny Depp, who is only in the movie for a couple of minutes.

The surprising thing is, Depp originally had a much larger part, and - for his role as soldier who speaks fluent Vietnamese - learned to speak nearly fluent Vietnamese, only a small amount of which makes it into the movie. Considering anybody watching the flick would reasonably presume Depp only learned the lines he needed to actually speak in the foreign language, the fact that he had a huge vocabulary just waiting to jump on the screen (and never got the chance to use it) remains one of the movie's most interesting hidden details.

So why was Depp's part cut down considerably? The reason is somewhat amusing: director Oliver Stone found himself so enamoured with Depp's performance (not to mention his good looks), that he decided to remove as much footage of the actor as possible, as not to detract attention from the not-so-enamouring Charlie Sheen.