Robert Englund talks Freddie Krueger and what scares him
Robert Englund was promoting his new SyFy film “Lake Placid: The Final Chapter” when he caught up with Media Mikes and reflected on playing the iconic “Nightmare on Elm Street” villain.
photo Cesarelgorila wikipedia
While Englund may be dishing out the scares, he denies being “afraid” himself.
“Nothing really scares me…I mean there’s films that scare me, I just even got a jolt the other night watching “Cabin in the Woods.” And I remember the original “Alien” got me several times, and I was a grown up when I saw that, and I dragged my poor father to see it.”
He does recount giving himself a shock filming the first “Elm Street.”
“…when I was in the makeup for the original Freddy, I fell asleep, we were shooting nights. And I fell asleep trying to get a nap and the AD banged on the door and said, “Mr. Englund hurry up we’re going to try and get this shot before the sun comes up.” And I sat up, and I forgot, this was during the first film, forgetting I was in this make-up. I sat up with, you know, that kind of bad breath you have after a little nap, and I rolled off of my cot in my little tiny, you know, honey wagon dressing room. And there in the recesses, in the forced perspective of my make-up mirror, opposite my bunk, surrounded by dim light bulbs – make-up light bulbs, that had been cranked down on the dimmer. I saw this old bald man with scars and burns all over him looking back at me. I kind of went, “Oh geez.” And I put my hand on my head and so did he. So it became this sort of nightmarish Marx brothers routine.”
Fans wouldn’t be surprised to hear Englund praise Wes Craven, the “Elm Street” creator and director.
“I’ve never regretted taking the role or my association with the great Wes Craven, and the success it brought me. You know, both economic and career success. Now, am I somewhat funneled into genre films, yes I am. I’ve done, I’ve done, I think I’m about to do, I’m about to start my 77th movie. Feature length film. And I think literally if you added up all my horror movies I think it’s less than 20. So horror movies less than 20, there’s another 55 films that I’ve done. Now, a couple of those are sci-fi, some of them are thrillers, you know, some of them are a little bit fantasy. But most of them are just other movies that I’ve done. And, or TV movies. I’ve done a lot of quality TV movies as well.”
“I’ve sort of become like a surrogate Vincent Price, a surrogate Klaus Kinski. A go to guy for those roles, and somebody has to do that and you know, we don’t really have a Cary Grant, or a Steve McQueen anymore. But if I can kind of fit into Vincent Price’s loafers, or Klaus Kinski’s boots a little bit. Even if it’s a low budget genre film, which both of those gentlemen did a lot of.”
Check out the entire interview here.
