Jack Sparrow

Jack arrives in Port Royal in a dinghy that sinks just as it reaches the dock. He's after a Royal Navy ship. When Elizabeth Swann faints and falls off a cliff after Commodore Norrington's proposal, Jack dives in and saves her. Norrington thanks him by spotting the pirate brand on his wrist and having him arrested. Jack slips away, hides in Will Turner's smithy and the two duel until Jack is caught.

That night the Black Pearl raids the town looking for a gold medallion and carries off Elizabeth. Will, who loves her, breaks Jack out of his cell in exchange for help. They steal the HMS Interceptor and stop in Tortuga for a crew. On the voyage, Gibbs tells Will that Jack was once the Pearl's captain, until his first mate, Barbossa, led a mutiny and marooned him on a desert island with a pistol and a single shot.

On Isla de Muerta, Jack learns that Barbossa's crew turns to skeletons in the moonlight because of cursed gold. He ends up a prisoner on the Pearl, then marooned with Elizabeth on the same island where he was left years before. Jack says the first time he got off by hitching a ride with rum runners. Elizabeth burns all the rum in a bonfire to signal the Navy, much to his dismay.

Jack talks Norrington into an ambush, then offers himself as Barbossa's partner and pockets a coin from the chest, becoming immortal like the pirates. In the final duel he shoots Barbossa at the exact moment Will returns the last coins with blood and breaks the curse. Barbossa dies. Back in Port Royal, Jack is sent to the gallows, but Will rescues him. He tumbles into the sea, the Pearl picks him up and Norrington grants him one day's head start before the chase.

Bootstrap Bill Turner, Will's father, turns up on the Pearl with a message: Jack made a deal with Davy Jones, who raised the ship from the depths and gave him 13 years as captain. Time's up, and now Jack owes service on the Flying Dutchman. He gets the Black Spot and the Kraken starts hunting him. His way out is the chest where Jones keeps his heart. The priestess Tia Dalma gives him a jar of dirt, since the Kraken can't reach land.

Jack sends Will to the Flying Dutchman as a down payment on the debt. In Tortuga he signs up a disgraced Norrington and runs into Elizabeth, who uses his compass, the one that points to what you want most. On Isla Cruces, Jack, Will and Norrington fight three ways over the heart, and Norrington gets away with it. During the Kraken's last attack, Elizabeth kisses Jack and chains him to the mast so the crew can escape. Jack faces the beast alone and goes down with the Pearl.

Jack is stuck in Davy Jones' Locker, a white desert where he talks to copies of himself. Barbossa, Will, Elizabeth and Tia Dalma come for him, and the group sails the Pearl back to the land of the living. Jack is one of the nine Pirate Lords summoned to fight the East India Trading Company, and he spends the film cutting deals with every side, Cutler Beckett included.

At the pirates' meeting, the Keeper of the Code is Captain Teague, Jack's father. Only a Pirate King can declare war, and every lord always votes for himself, until Jack votes for Elizabeth. During the battle inside the maelstrom he duels Davy Jones over the heart. Jack wanted to stab it and become immortal, but when Jones mortally wounds Will, Jack puts the blade in his friend's hand and helps him stab it. He escapes, loses the Pearl to Barbossa again and sails off in a dinghy with the chart to the Fountain of Youth.

In London, Jack saves Gibbs from the gallows, gets caught and is dragged before King George II, who wants him to lead the way to the Fountain of Youth before Spain gets there. Barbossa, now a privateer for the king with a peg leg, runs the expedition. Jack escapes and runs into Angelica, an old flame who is Blackbeard's daughter. She gets him drunk and shanghais him onto the Queen Anne's Revenge.

Blackbeard needs two silver chalices, water from the fountain and a mermaid's tear for a ritual that steals the years of another person's life. Jack and Barbossa take the chalices from the Santiago, and Jack hands his compass to Gibbs. At the fountain he tricks Blackbeard into drinking from the wrong chalice: the pirate dies and Angelica lives. Jack maroons Angelica on an island, telling her he loves her but doesn't trust her. With Gibbs, he ends up with the Black Pearl, shrunk inside a bottle.

Years later, Jack's luck has run out. A bank heist falls apart, his crew walks out and he trades his compass for a bottle of rum. Giving it up frees Captain Salazar and his undead crew from the Devil's Triangle. A flashback shows where the feud began: as a young man, Jack took command of the Wicked Wench and the compass in the battle against Salazar, then lured him onto the Triangle's rocks with a clever turn. Salazar says the boy looked like a little bird up in the rigging, which is where the name Sparrow comes from. His crew gave him the hat.

Jack escapes the guillotine with help from Henry Turner and the astronomer Carina Smyth, who are searching for the Trident of Poseidon. Barbossa joins them and frees the Pearl from its bottle. When the trident is destroyed, every curse of the sea is broken. Barbossa dies saving his daughter, Carina, and Jack takes back the Pearl with Barbossa's monkey on his shoulder.

Screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio pictured Jack as a supporting character. Johnny Depp changed that by drawing on Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and the cartoon skunk Pepé Le Pew for his tipsy walk and slurred talk. The role earned Depp his first Oscar nomination. Off screen, the character has a children's book series, Jack Sparrow, and the novel The Price of Freedom, which tell stories from before the films.