I remember being petrified by that,” Lily-Rose Depp said of watching her father’s movie ‘Edward Scissorhands’ at 3 years old

Lily-Rose Depp attends the Los Angeles premiere of Focus Features' "Nosferatu"; Edward Scissorhands, Johnny Depp

Lily-Rose Depp and Johnny Depp as Edward Scissorhands. Photo: Kevin Winter/GA/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty; Moviestore/Shutterstock

Lily-Rose Depp’s feelings towards Edward Scissorhands are complicated.

While the Nosferatu star, 25, promoted her new horror movie in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar U.K. published Thursday, Jan. 2, she recalled her parents Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis allowing her to watch her dad’s 1990 classic Tim Burton movie for the first time at just age 3.

“I was traumatized by it,” Lily-Rose told the outlet. “Not because I thought he was scary, but because everyone was being so mean to him and I got really upset.”

Edward Scissorhands, which marked the first of her dad’s numerous collaborations with filmmaker Burton, 66, follows Johnny as the title character, an artificial humanoid with scissors for hands, who moves in with a suburban family. Edward’s story ends on a less-than-happy note, with citizens from the suburban town chasing him away. Lily-Rose reflected that she found the film’s end “so distressing she has refused to watch it ever since,” as Harper’s Bazaar U.K. reported.

“I remember being petrified by that, which is weird, because I don’t have many memories from when I was that young,” she said. “It’s a difficult childhood memory.”

Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder on the set of Edward Scissorhands, written and directed by Tim Burton

Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder on the set of 1990’s Edward Scissorhands. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corpo/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis

The actress also related her feelings for Edward Scissorhands to how she feels about Nosferatu‘s title character. “Edward’s the good guy and Nosferatu’s kind of the bad guy, but there’s a part of me that feels a little bit of empathy for Nosferatu,” she told the outlet. “I mean, am I sick for feeling that way?”

Johnny and Burton reflected on making Edward Scissorhands in an untitled documentary series from Tara Wood that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2024, in which the actor recalled that figures like Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise and Michael Jackson contacted Burton about portraying Edward before he got the part.

Lily-Rose Depp attends the Los Angeles premiere of Focus Features' "Nosferatu"

Lily-Rose Depp on Dec. 12, 2024.Andrew Toth/WireImage

The actor said in the documentary that reading the movie’s script “passed through everything, anything, solid and went to the very core of whatever I am. The writing was beautiful. The character was beautiful. What I suppose [attracted] me emotionally was that Edward was me. It’s exactly what I should be doing.”

Lily-Rose is one of Johnny’s two children with ex Paradis, whom Johnny was in a relationship between 1998 and 2012. The former couple also share son Jack, 22; both Jack and Lily-Rose grew up in both France and the United States.