The real story behind Johnny Depp's big break: How a 13-year-old girl helped make him famous

We mightn't have had Captain Jack Sparrow or Edward Scissorhands if it wasn't for one 13-year-old girl who had a crush on a young heart-throb named Johnny Depp.

That's right, we can thank Jessica Craven for influencing her father Wes' decision to cast then-21-year-old Johnny in his first major role in A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984.

Jessica has recalled how her father let her sit in on the auditions and read with the actors.

Wes previously admitted he thought Johnny looked too "sickly, kind of pale" to play doomed high-school bad boy Glen Latz, but Jessica now says it was her who convinced him otherwise.

"It was seeing [my] reaction that made my father decide to take a chance on him," Jessica wrote in an email to Huffington Post. "No headshot would have elicited the same."

Jessica met Johnny in the waiting room before the casting.

"He was just so cute," she said. "My friend and I were both smitten...He was very sweet to me. I suppose, to be cynical, in retrospect he was being sweet to me because I was the director's daughter. But it didn't come across that way at all. He was far nicer and more charming that anyone else that came in.

"It was just one of those very teenage reactions...sort of like teenage girls screaming at The Beatles. After he left, my girlfriend and I just squealed and spent the rest of the day talking about how cute he was. I didn't tell my dad to cast him, I just reacted."

She now describes the moment as "a one-off experience".

"If we hadn't been there that day, perhaps [her father] would have cast someone else," she said.

Jessica hasn't seen Johnny since and doesn't want to "claim" credit for his career, but says she feels "oddly connected to him".

What a story!

On the topic of all things Johnny, view TheFIX's mesmerising face morph of his changing face over the years: