‘Edward Scissorhands’: The Johnny Depp movie that left Lily-Rose Depp traumatised
Not every film is meant for the faint of heart. Even if someone tries their best to make the best movie that has ever graced a silver screen, there are a bunch of moments that either don’t add up or lead to people walking out wondering what the hell they even watched. It’s also possible to have a reverse effect as well, though, and when Lily-Rose Depp first saw her father in this film, she remembered being deeply troubled by what he was doing onscreen.
Then again, nothing was really off the table regarding Depp’s career in his prime. While many might look back and have fun watching him getting tortured in A Nightmare on Elm Street, watching him go through everything from being cast in Tom Petty videos to playing Willy Wonka meant that he wasn’t afraid to switch things up whenever someone thought they put him in a box.
But the real calling card behind all of Depp’s greatest roles was how heavy some of them could be. Despite his first horror movie being a fun romp, Platoon was about as serious as a war drama could get, complete with some of the most graphic death scenes of the time. That wasn’t even the last time that he tried a film that off-the-wall, with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas being one of the most batshit insane films that he has ever been a part of.
For anyone who had been used to that brand of role, it wasn’t going to be out of the question to see him working on something a bit darker when it came to children’s entertainment, and for Depp, all roads led back to Tim Burton. Aside from making every millennial’s introduction to Batman in 1989 and the Halloween classic A Nightmare Before Christmas, Burton would find a partner in Depp, working in everything from The Corpse Bride to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Sweeney Todd.
Even for Burton’s dark track record, Edward Scissorhands stood out as one of the strangest pairings between him and Depp. The idea of the macabre director taking on the classic tale of a man with blades coming out of his body pretty much writes itself, Lily-Rose remembered how unsettled she was watching her father get ridiculed throughout the film.
When talking about watching her father’s first movies, she remembered having a visceral reaction to watching Edward Scissorhands for the first time, saying, “I was traumatized by it. Not because I thought he was scary but because everyone was being so mean to him and I got really upset. I remember being petrified by that, which is weird because I don’t have many memories from when I was that young.”
Despite that kind of trauma, Lily-Rose managed to channel that kind of empathy into her future roles as well. Her performance in Nosferatu means seeing this monster as a person before anything else, and despite it getting critically flambéed upon release, her performance of Joslyn in The Idol at least gives a look at someone who can be sympathetic despite pulling the strings in the dark side of the music industry.
So, really, a lot of what both Johnny and Lily-Rose Depp have done has made us look at their characters through a different lens. Yes, they may look absolutely horrifying when looking at a movie poster, but the more you unpack them onscreen, the easier it is to find some compassion behind the cold eyes or rough exterior.
