“It’s because I love comic books and this dreamy kind of atmosphere,” Bellucci explains of her many goth roles. “I think Tim knows how to create situations that are funny, scary, shocking, unpredictable, but at the same time also emotional and deep.”
O’Hara, a cast member of both Beetlejuice movies, agrees that Burton knows how to make seemingly silly stories generate genuine moments of pathos or sympathy.”
“Most of us just think that way, you want to have it all there,” says O’Hara. “It’s been said a zillion times, but life is a mixture of all those things, all those emotions, and laughter is just such a beautiful gift that we’ve been given to release us from pain and sorrow and scary moments in our life. Anybody who wants to make a good story tries to get it all in there… The story definitely helped ground the women’s characters, especially what Lydia and Delia and Astrid were going through and what Beetlejuice was going through. I love to see the vulnerability of Beetlejuice actually scared of his ex wife. It’s so hilarious.”
That vengeful ex-wife character of Delores, as embodied by Bellucci, comes across as a mix of some of Burton’s most iconic female characters including Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas, Emily from Corpse Bride, or Vampira from Ed Wood.
States Bellucci, “Tim creates this creature—I think she’s more a creature instead of a monster—but what I like about her is there is a duality, because she’s scary but also funny. Even though she’s dead, she’s full of life because she’s looking for vengeance. She’s dangerous, and there’s some glamor over there, and I have to say that we all have emotional scars and she has scars all over. She’s like a metaphor of reality in some way. In the scene where she puts herself together it took two or three days to film it and felt a bit like mime. I tried to move like a broken doll. I like when you have the chance to give life to a character through your body, because the body is your instrument as an actor.”
Delores isn’t the only one who has it out for Beetlejuice, apparently. While Astrid may be an outcast private school student, Ortega’s recent foray as Wednesday Addams made us wonder how that character would have handled Beetlejuice’s shenanigans.