KATHY BAKER REVEALS SHE IMPROVISED AN UNFORGETTABLE SCENE WITH JOHNNY DEPP IN EDWARD SCISSORHANDS.K2 ✂️

“I’d read about it in a book,” Baker said of her unscripted move.

Johnny Depp and Kathy Baker in ‘Edward Scissorhands’; Johnny Depp at CinemaCon in April 2026.Credit: Everett; Candice Ward/Getty

Sometimes acting opposite Johnny Depp can be a feet-curling experience. Just ask Kathy Baker.

The three-time Emmy winner graced Hollywood Forever Cemetery with her presence Saturday night ahead of Cinespia’s screening of the 1990 Tim Burton classic Edward Scissorhands, in which she played the sultry, ambrosia-salad-making Joyce Monroe who takes immediate uh… let’s say erotic… interest in Depp’s Edward.

Edward is a Frankenstein-style creature with — get this — scissors for hands. He has lived in isolation since his creator (Vincent Price) died, that is, until the kindly neighborhood Avon Lady (Dianne Wiest) takes him in with her family. As he attempts to acclimate to suburbia, he becomes an obsession of the local housewives, who utilize his hands to cut their shrubs and style their dogs.

It is Joyce who has the idea to have Edward try his hand at cutting the women’s hair. And it is extremely apparent how titillating she finds the act to be. When it came time for the big haircut scene, she went well beyond what was scripted.

“I get a little orgasmic about the whole thing, and my feet are kind of curling up. Well, that wasn’t in the script or anything. I just sort of did that,” Baker explained to the 4,000-member audience at the cemetery, joking that she’d “read about it in a book.”

Burton left her extra umph in, right down to a close-up of her feet curling. “Tim goes, ‘Get a shot of those feet,’” the Cold Mountain actress recalled.

As for the close proximity to the then-27-year-old Depp, Baker professed that the young performer was “just adorable and darling and sweet and professional.” She remembered that she thought her character would “really want him to taste her ambrosia salad” during the movie’s hilarious cookout sequence in which Edward is presented to the neighbors for the first time.

“Every shot I would just give him a big old scoop of salad, you know, and he would take it. He would go for it. He was great,” Baker said. “And then you know, after three or four takes, he goes, ‘No, I, I need a spit bucket, please.’ Because it was good, but not that good.”

Baker took her role as seductress seriously. She knew exactly who this woman was, down to the fingernails.

“We made it in Tampa, Florida. I had my little kids with me, my five-year-old and my three-month-old with me, and I decided that I wanted to get those long nails for the character. You know, everybody has the long nails now, right? But people didn’t do that in those days. So I told the nail lady, just you know, ‘Give me the nails the longest that you can do. Don’t cut them,’” Baker related, then recounting when she headed to Florida for the shoot. “So I’m holding my three-month-old with these nails in the airport, and this little old lady, she looks at me, and she says, ‘How do you change his diaper with these nails?’”

Depp, of course, would catapult into major film stardom, in part because of Scissorhands, and would star in future Burton collaborations such as Ed Wood and Sleepy Hollow.

Baker, meanwhile, would endear herself to a generation of television viewers with her Emmy-winning role on Picket Fences, in addition to her performances in The Cider House Rules, 13 Going on 30, and, most recently, in Remarkably Bright Creatures with Sally Field and Lewis Pullman.

Cinespia screenings at the legendary Hollywood Forever Cemetery — the resting place for David Lynch, Judy Garland, Rudolph Valentino, and Burt Reynolds, among many others — every Saturday for the rest of the summer, with upcoming movies in the lineup like Practical Magic, The Mummy, and Labyrinth. Click here for tickets and information.