Did the shooting of A Nightmare on Elm Street cause you nightmares? Mr.blancmange
In the first part, I didn’t have my movie star trailer; It had a small cart the size of a urinal, with a Formica table, a plastic chair, and a mirror with light bulbs around it: the classic back-to-back makeup room. The lights were on in a dimmer. I took them down when I was taking a nap around 4 in the morning, with my head resting on a well-rolled towel so that I wouldn’t stain my makeup. I was waiting for them to call me on set and I heard a knock on the door. As I sat down, I saw this disfigured face looking in the mirror. The shock knocked me out of my skin. I raised my hand and realized, “My God, it’s my own reflection!” But it was such an amazing time that I still experience a variety of nightmares.
In the photos behind the scenes of A Nightmare on Elm Street, there seems to be a strong connection between you and the young cast. Did that make it hard to kill most of them on screen? Ker555
When making films, you are sure to develop a relationship of actors. We would all get up at dawn, eyes swollen, full of caffeine, apprehensive about the work of the day. I remember making fun of Heather Langenkamp [Nancy Thompson in Nightmare 1 and 3], who was a Russian graduate of Stanford University. She would tell dirty jokes, which I think she rejected, but which correlated with Freddy’s nasty and insinuations and helped break the ice. I know Mark Patton [Jesse Walsh in Nightmare 2] agreed that we should play with Freddy’s sexual innuendo by circumcising his mouth with my blade.
At the time of practical effects, much was left to the imagination. You would be stepping on puppeteers and animatronic equipment crawling in ninja costumes. So this backstage joke really helps when they say, “Action,” so you can move on to reality.
Do you have a favorite iteration of Freddy, from the dark origins of the first two to the ingenious sequels and the return to a darker Freddy in New Nightmare? ninkwink
Fans loved the clown’s dark, cruel sense of humor, which became apparent when people started quoting Freddy’s phrases, such as, “Now I’m your boyfriend.” So we took advantage of it as the franchise progressed. But when we got to the seventh part [Wes Craven’s New Nightmare]we made it very dark again: what if Freddy, the manifestation of evil, was really out there?
But Freddy was always a fool. In the original nightmare, Freddy sticks his tongue out of a phone, eviscerates a girl, and wears his face as a mask like a cheap emotion. He cuts his fingers and breaks cautiously as the green pus and blood gushes out. I know Wes thought we took him too far, but we were responding to fans who loved this idiot without apology and politically incorrect, exercising his nightmare revenge mode.
Watch the trailer for Englund’s latest film, Choose or Die.
Do you dress up as Freddy on Halloween and scare the kids? TopTramp
No. I leave Halloween to fans in disguise and leave New Year’s Eve to amateur drinkers. But during filming, we’re sure to have fun. When I made my first film, I got tired of cooking food, so Nick Corri, Johnny Depp, and I crossed Sunset Boulevard and sat in the back of this dark Thai restaurant. I took off my hat, we ordered, and as the waiter opened the kitchen doors, I lit up with fluorescent lighting. The waiter looked at me carefully, dropped the tray, went back to the kitchen and we never saw him again.
Sometimes I was worried that I would be scared, so every now and then I would hide behind the landscape and stare out of the darkness at some unsuspecting crew member who was going to the bathroom. I think a pair of 6-foot, 2-inch tweezers soiled her underwear, so I knew she still had it.
Did you really audition for the parts of Luke and Han Solo in Star Wars? How far have you come? TopTramp
No. I really wanted to be in Apocalypse Now. I wanted to read for Chef – played by the late and great Frederic Forrest – but this part had been occupied. They heard I was a surfer, so I read to the surfer, but I think they thought I was too big. As I was leaving, one of the producers told me that they were casting through the hallway for this space movie by George Lucas. George Lucas was my hero, so I thought, “Damn, I’m leaving.” At the time, they wanted Han Solo to grow up, like a great uncle who lets you smoke marijuana for Christmas. They looked at me for five minutes, grabbed a pair of polaroids; I didn’t read. That’s all I remember.
But when I left, I snatched the sides of the audition [script excerpt] for this much younger character named Luke Skywalker. I went back to my Hollywood Hills apartment and my friend Mark Hamill’s cowboy boots were on my porch. He was working on the hill at CBS Studios as a hugely successful television actor. Mark was watching the Bob Newhart or Mary Tyler Moore show. We watched together in the afternoon and then called our agents at 5pm to see how our auditions had gone. I remember saying, “Guess what? George Lucas is making this space movie. “We both loved American Graffiti, so Mark called his agent and pressured her to audition. It’s kind of like the movie Graffiti. Tarantino Once Upon a Time in Hollywood I was living with Jan Fischer at The Lost Boys at the time, our best friend became Luke Skywalker, and I became Freddy Krueger, when we were just three young people. who lived in Hollywood Hills with big dreams.
This is Englund … Robert behind the mask. Photo: DPA Picture Alliance / Alamy
Did you really sing the choruses in Elton John’s Can You Feel the Love Tonight with Gary Barlow and Rick Astley for The Lion King? Princeton
I think it’s a rumor on the internet. I did a million different voice-overs, but I had nothing to do with The Lion King. Besides, I can’t sing.
What can you tell us about your role in the fourth series of Stranger Things? TopTramp
This season is a tribute to the horror of the 80’s. I think this is his scariest season. I come around episode four. [The series debuted on 27 May.] When I hit Covid, I was making some personal appearances and some Stranger Things fans were asking me such specific questions that I assumed other actors had already talked about it. So they slapped me for it.
Are you, in fact, a sympathetic reptoid of outer space in human skin, as the 80s TV series suggests? Random_Dan
No, I’m not a reptile. Snakes are one of the things that make me sleepy. In the early ’80s, they still had an old-fashioned makeup lab on the Warner Bros. lot, with all these men in white medical jackets making glorious design prostheses. On one occasion, as I was playing with a reptile that could withstand extreme cold, I came to the rescue of an earthling and they had to make a kind of frozen bottle effect. I was literally glued grapes in the middle of my face with wax, so it looked like it had been bottled on one side.
Later in the series, I discover that my resistance mates will be experimenting with me to see what is toxic to aliens, as a test of alien allergy. He had his whole back fitted with reptile skin, down to the line of his hair and behind his ears, with fake skin on top. Then they did this weird surgery where they removed my fake humanoid back and saw that it was made of scaly, shiny reptile skin.
With Zsa Zsa Gabor on Nightmare 3. Photography: Cinetext Collection / Sportsphoto / Allstar
What memories do you have of appearing in a 2012 Halloween special from Come Dine With Me? Unknown here
I remember ordering a fresh tuna fillet to add my secret ingredients: chives, sweet cucumbers, finely chopped red pepper, a hard boiled egg, some gourmet mayonnaise and some honey mustard. I put it all together, put it on top of too much toasted mother with a little butter, then undo it in the cheese; is an old bachelor recipe called melted tuna. But it only works if you use high quality tuna. The crew brought this terrible canned tuna. I ended up serving my poor fellow contestants glorified cat food.
The problem with doing British reality shows is that sometimes I know exactly who the people are, I know all the gossip and scandals, but sometimes I don’t. Tell me I’m a celebrity … Get me out of here! with any IQ person or with the Tipping Point host [Ben Shephard]. I do anything to go to London, because I’m an Anglophile. I’ve often been out in London, grabbed a couple of cocktails, and headed back to my room. When jet lag starts, I find Tipping Point and it’s a great comforting food for me, as are IQ reps with Alan Davies and Stephen Fry, making such wonderful jokes.
Robert Englund stars in Choose or Die on Netflix