FLORIDA HAIRDRESSER THE REAL 'SCISSORHANDS'

By Susan M. Barbieri

From The Toronto Star, 01.10.1991, Final Edition

ORLANDO, Fla.--In the fairy tale film Edward Scissorhands, Johnny Depp plays a man whose inventor dies before he can finish his humanoid. Edward has everything he needs to lead a full life -except real hands.

Edward's hands are sharp metal shears that are capable of both great harm and great creativity. He lives alone in a hilltop mansion until one day he is rescued by an Avon lady and taken to suburbia. There, he displays his sculpting talent on shrubbery, dogs and on the neighborhood women's hair.

Edward's style is, well, different. We're talking mondo-bizarro, post-punk hair that goes well beyond the average spiked do.

Longwood, Fla., hairdresser Lynda Kyle Walker was among the stylists who helped turn director Tim Burton's dream into a reality. Walker and six others, including Disney stylist Liz Spang, were the real hands behind Scissorhands.

Will the shrub-head look play in Peoria? Will it catch on among trendy types?

"It's hard to guess with John Q. Public," said Walker, 39, as she wrapped a client's hair in perm rollers.

When not working on film sets, she works at Candace Reed Hair Design in Longwood. She put in 12- to 15-hour days for five weeks on Scissorhands and is currently keeping the same pace on the set of Oscar, a film set in the 1930s starring Sylvester Stallone.

"Working on film is a lot different than working in a salon. You're working with a lot of wigs," Walker said. There were 19 wigs for 19 extras in the film. Walker worked on most of them. She followed the designs of Yolanda Toussieng, a California hairstylist who works in film.

"These are very expensive wigs. They were anywhere from $750 to $2,000. So if you cut it and you don't cut it right, you can't get another wig," Walker said.

Each wig was colored, cut, styled and formed into fanciful shapes--in some cases using wire. Walker would not say exactly what kinds of materials were used to make the more elaborate designs stand straight up, but industrial-strength gel and even glue are sometimes used to make hair defy gravity.

"No one has any idea how much work and time goes into prepping a wig," Walker said, explaining that the actors have to be first measured for their head size. "They're hand made, either in California or New York, by wig makers. It's real hair, and it's all done by hand."

Actors who didn't wear wigs in the film wore hairpieces, she said. "I put the hair extensions in for Johnny Depp's hair--the long pieces you see coming out of his head."

Walker has been fiddling with hair for 22 years. She got her start at age 16, styling hair for high school plays. To qualify for film work, she took a proficiency test administered by a hairdressers' union.