Johnny Depp says he would have 'taken a bullet' for Gerry Conlon

Hollywood star reveals close friendship with one of Guildford Four, who suggested he play him in film that became In the Name of the Father

Johnny Depp has described his close friendship with Gerry Conlon, saying he would have “taken a bullet” for him, in a moving foreword to a new biography of the man who spent 15 years in prison after he was wrongly convicted as an IRA bomber.

The unlikely friendship between the Hollywood actor and Conlon, one of the Guildford Four, began when the pair met in the US in 1990, the year after Conlon had his conviction overturned and was released from prison. Their friendship was sealed at a gig by the Pogues, where Depp described Conlon and his brother as looking “just like the miscreant, unhinged maniacs I always tended to hang out with”. Depp describes the book, In the Name of the Son, as “a story of a man I loved”.

Related: Gerry Conlon obituary

Related: Gerry Conlon: My ordeal goes on. For others the nightmare is just starting

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