Johnny Depp on Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow - rare 1999 interview

We had great times on Scissorhands, certainly. I don't think I've ever laughed so much in my life. I can remember reading the script and, it's embarrassing, weeping. I mean, I cried, you know, I read the thing, I cried. I thought it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever read in my life, you know. I was absolutely convinced that Tim would never give me the gig. I picked up the phone and said hello, and then a voice on the other end said, You are Edward Scissorhands. It wasn't that anyone was trying to be funny, it was sort of just the idea that we were very true to the situations. It's all right, it's all right. Alan Arkin, his character takes Edward down to his sort of man room and gives him what he calls lemonade, and Edward gets drunk. Good, isn't it? And so it was for me, the challenge was to sort of try to express the fact that Edward was drunk, and unable to speak, so it was, I had come up with this kind of strange chatter, you know, this sort of, this sort of thing. Kim, this is Edward, who's going to live with us. After the take, I remember Tim cackling like a fiend, you know. I just used to put them on in my house. I can remember trying to go to sleep with the hands on, you know, to see what it would be like in the morning when I woke up, having forgotten that they were on, and I woke up and the hands were completely across the room. I'd flung them off during the night at some point. I can't eat that. He used his hands. I don't think it's sanitary. What manner of instruments are these? Some of my own design. I just thought it was amazing. I mean, the sort of surgical inventions of Ichabod Crane. It definitely changes the way you see things. I'm not finished. Tim is such a great opportunity to go anywhere. It is like being launched into a sort of alternative universe. For me, it feels like home, you know. It's, it's a dream.