Jack Sparrow first appears in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), where he arrives in Port Royal looking to commandeer a ship. Despite rescuing Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley), the daughter of Governor Weatherby Swann (Jonathan Pryce) from drowning, he is jailed for piracy. That night, the ghost ship, the Black Pearl attacks Port Royal. Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) is trying to break an ancient Aztec curse that he and the crew are under. Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), a blacksmith who loves Elizabeth, frees Sparrow to aid him in rescuing her. They steal the HMS Interceptor and acquire a crew in Tortuga before heading to Isla de Muerta, where Elizabeth is being held captive. They are quickly captured, and Barbossa maroons Sparrow and Elizabeth on a deserted isle.
In the sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006), Sparrow searches for the Dead Man's Chest. Thirteen years earlier, Sparrow bartered his soul to Captain Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) in return for Jones raising the sunken Black Pearl and making Sparrow captain. In the film, Sparrow must either serve for 100 years aboard the Flying Dutchman, or be taken by the Kraken to Davy Jones’s Locker. The Dead Man's Chest contains Jones’s heart—stabbing it will kill Jones and free Sparrow from his blood debt. Adding to Sparrow's woes, Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander) of the East India Trading Company wants to settle his own debt with Sparrow and forces Will Turner to search for him. Will finds Sparrow and his crew hiding from the Kraken on Pelegosto where they have been captured by cannibals. They escape, but Sparrow betrays Will to Davy Jones as part of a new deal to deliver 100 souls in exchange for his own. Sparrow recruits sailors in Tortuga where he unexpectedly encounters Elizabeth and the disgraced James Norrington. Convincing Elizabeth she can free Will by finding the Chest, they head for Isla Cruces after she pinpoints its location with Jack's magic compass. Will also arrives, having escaped Jones’s ship after stealing the key to the Chest. Will wants to stab the heart and free his father who is in Jones’s service, while Norrington- who has discovered Lord Cutler Beckett desires the heart in order to control Davy Jones and the seas- hopes to regain his career by delivering the heart to Beckett. Sparrow fears if Jones is dead, the Kraken will continue hunting him. Jones’s crew arrives, and during the ensuing battle, Norrington steals the heart. Jones summons the Kraken to attack the Black Pearl. Realizing that the Kraken only wants Sparrow, Elizabeth tricks him by giving him a passionate kiss while chaining him to the mast to save the crew; Sparrow and the ship are dragged down to Davy Jones’s Locker.
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007), opens with Davy Jones’s heart now in Beckett's possession, and the nine pirate lords of the Brethren Court are summoned to convene at Shipwreck Cove to combat the combined threat of Beckett and Jones. Though taken to Davy Jones’s Locker at the end of the previous film, Sparrow, who is the Pirate Lord of the Caribbean, must attend the meeting, as he failed to bequeath his "piece of eight", a pirate lord's identification marker, to an heir. The collective "pieces of eight" can summon the sea goddess Calypso. A resurrected Barbossa leads Sparrow's crew to Davy Jones’s Locker using the Singaporean pirate lord Sao Feng's navigational charts. There Sparrow has been hallucinating an entire crew comprised of himself, each representing a facet of his personality. After Barbossa and the crew find him, Sparrow deciphers a clue on the charts that indicates they must capsize the Black Pearl to escape the Locker; at sunset, the ship upturns back into the living world. Sparrow and Barbossa journey to the Brethren Court where they encounter Elizabeth, who was traded to Sao Feng, and was made a Pirate Lord by him just before he died. At the Brethren Court, she is elected "Pirate King" after Sparrow breaks a stalemate (the other lords always voted for themselves). During parley, he is traded for Will, who was captured by Jones and Beckett. The Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchman face off in battle during a maelstrom created by Calypso, Sparrow steals Davy Jones’s heart to become immortal, but when Jones mortally wounds Will, Sparrow instead helps Will stab the heart, killing Jones and making Will the Flying Dutchman's new captain. Together, the Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchman destroy Beckett's ship. At the end of the film Barbossa again commandeers the Black Pearl and Feng's charts, stranding Sparrow in Tortuga. Fortunately, Sparrow has already removed the chart's center, and he sets sail in a small boat, using his compass and the chart to guide him to the Fountain of Youth.