Kim McGuire, known as Hatchet-Face in 'Cry-Baby,' has died: Reports
By Chelsea Brasted, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
on September 15, 2016
Kim McGuire, the New Orleans-born actress known for playing the teenager called Hatchet-Face in the 1990 cult classic "Cry-Baby," has died, TMZ reports. She was 60 years old.
Mrs. McGuire's husband, Gene Piotrowsky, told the website that Mrs. McGuire had been hospitalized in Florida on Tuesday (Sept. 13) with pneumonia. She didn't respond to treatment, according to the website, and she died of cardiac arrest Wednesday.
Mrs. McGuire, who graduated with a master's degree in theater from the University of New Orleans, landed her first big screen acting role as a facially-disfigured teen in "Cry-Baby," which starred Johnny Depp. At the time, Mrs. McGuire was living in New York and hoping for call-backs from any number of auditions when casting director Paula Herold, looking for someone "who was ugly and proud of it," stumbled across Mrs. McGuire's headshot.
"The producer said I blew everybody else out of the water," said Mrs. McGuire in a 1990 interview with The Times-Picayune. "It was real exciting because it's kind of unheard of to get a major role like that without an agent."
The John Waters movie failed to bring in crowds to movie theaters when it debuted in 1990, but it ultimately became a classic that breathed life into a spin-off Broadway musical.
Mrs. McGuire earned a co-starring role in "Disturbed" later that year and landed a role on ABC's "On the Air," which she thought might be the thing she needed to hit stardom.
"What I think is really great," McGuire said, "is that I've done it the legitimate way -- no connections, totally just one work. I call it a Cinderella story."
The show didn't fare well, however, and in an interview with The Times-Picayune at the time, Mrs. McGuire blamed the slapstick comedy's poor ratings and ultimate failure on a poor time slot.
"Saturday nights in the summer at 8:30 -- how could they do this to us?" Mrs. McGuire said. "I don't know what's going to happen. To me, when you get someone like (series creator) David Lynch -- who's really an auteur for television -- you should go out of your way to take care of him."
Instead, Mrs. McGuire turned her attention to law, according to a report from Variety. She became an entertainment and appellate lawyer, passing bar exams in in Alabama and California, but she and Piotrowsky were in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina arrived in 2005. They were amongst the thousands who lost everything, and the pair moved to Florida.
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