When Kim Nam Gil showed up on the set of the film "The Pirates," he was told to forget Johnny Depp and his performance as Jack Sparrow in "Pirates of the Caribbean."

But he ignored that advice when creating his character.

"Although Jack Sparrow and Jang are very different characters, with 'Pirates' being the first major film on pirates in Korea, I watched it a number of times to get an idea of how pirates are portrayed in the film," he said in an interview with the Korea Herald.

Not only does a woman helm the pirate ship in the Korean "The Pirates" but Kim Nam Gil doesn't actually play a pirate. He plays a bandit leader who eventually teams up with the pirate captain Yeo Wol, played by Son Ye Jin.

The script for "The Pirates" started with the story of a royal seal that really disappeared during the Joseon era and transformed it into a fantastic tale of a ghost whale and the adventurers who seek to recover the seal. The pirates and the bandits are both searching for the seal and eventually team up to find it.

And even if Jang is a pirate by association, the two characters are very different. Jack Sparrow does not seem to take anything very seriously. Jang Sa Jung, Kim Nam Gil's character, can be funny and upbeat but he is loyal and would die for those he has pledged his loyalty to. Once Kim studied Jack Sparrow he looked for ways to make his pirate character more Korean.

The director told him to act naturally and incorporate his own personality into the character. He did.

That may be one reason that his co-star Son Ye Jin thinks the part of the clever bandit suits him perfectly. And the actor chose that role at least partly because his last two roles were dark, driven characters. In The melodrama "Shark," he played the revenge-driven Han Yi Soo. He's a man who forsakes any chance of happiness to catch his father's killer. Son Ye Jin was also his co-star in that film so she has something to compare his "Pirates" role to.

Before "Shark" the 33-year-old actor appeared in "Bad Guys" as the revenge-driven Shim Gun Wook.

He described his role of Jang as a welcome change from the unhappy characters he played in his last two melodramas. He was feeling uncertain about his abilities.

"I needed a breakthrough, where I could act more naturally and loosen up a bit," he said in the Korea Herald interview.

The film opens in Korea on Aug. 6.