When he takes on a role, Johnny Depp often paints a watercolor portrait of the still-forming character to help find his face and personality. After putting the finishing touches on his painting for “Alice in Wonderland,” Depp liked down at the Mad Hatter staring back at him from the canvas and giggled. “I was thinking,” the actor said, “‘Oh my God, this one will get me fired!” “I think [the Mad Hatter] was poisoned  — very, very poisoned,” Depp said. “And I think it just took affect in all his nerves. It was coming out through his hair and through his fingernails, through his eyes” Depp’s research also took him down some unexpected literary rabbit holes with the writings of Carroll.“There’s a great line in the book where the Hatter says, ‘I’m investigating things that begin with the letter ‘M,’” Depp said. “So I started kind of doing a little researching, reading a bunch. And you start thinking about the letter ‘M’ and Hatters and the term ‘Mad as a hatter’ and ‘mercury.’” Depp was also intrigued by one of the Mad Hatter’s nonsense questions during a dizzying tea party: “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” “I think he is referencing Edgar Allan Poe,” Depp said, referring to the haunted author of “The Raven,” which was published in 1845, two decades before Carroll’s surreal tale reached the public. Depp let the two ideas germinate in his head and it informed his own Hatter concoction.

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