Tim Burton stating, "I basically wasted a year. A year is a long time to be working with somebody that you don't really want to be working with." "Sleepy Hollow", released in late 1999, had a supernatural setting and contained another offbeat performance by Johnny Depp as Ichabod Crane, a detective with an interest in forensic science rather than the schoolteacher of Washington Irving's original tale. With "Sleepy Hollow", Burton paid homage to the horror films of the English company Hammer Films. Christopher Lee, one of Hammer's stars, was given a cameo role. A host of Burton regulars appeared in supporting roles
Johnny Depp has gained cult classic status. Depp had no film releases in the following two years, with the exception of a brief cameo in "" (1991), the sixth installment in the "A Nightmare of Elm Street" franchise. He appeared in three films in 1993. In the romantic comedy "Benny and Joon", he played an eccentric and illiterate silent film fan who befriends a mentally ill woman and her brother; it became a sleeper hit. He then starred alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Juliette Lewis in Lasse Hallström's "What's Eating Gilbert Grape", a drama about a dysfunctional family. In his review of the