Freddy or not: A Nightmare on Elm Street star looks back on his career

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Robert Englund insists that his days playing Freddy Krueger — the dream-invading killer he portrayed in 1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street, seven subsequent movies, the anthology TV show Freddy's Nightmares, and even an episode of The Goldbergs — are over.

"I won't don the fedora or strap on the claws again," the actor, 75, tells EW. "I'm just a little too old."

The good news for horror fans is that Englund relives his heyday of portraying the undead villain in a new documentary, Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story (out this Tuesday). Directed by Gary Smart and Christopher Griffiths, the movie also tracks his appearances in more recent genre projects like Stranger Things, as well as devoting a generous amount of time to his early years as a cherub-faced actor in '70s movies such as Stay Hungry (1976) and Big Wednesday (1978).

Robert Englung attends 'El Hormiguero' Tv show at Vertice Studio on May 27, 2015
Robert Englung attends 'El Hormiguero' Tv show at Vertice Studio on May 27, 2015

Juan Naharro Gimenez/Getty Robert Englund

"I always am asked if I feel bad about being typecast in horror," says Englund. "I have to remind people that, for 10 years, I was 'the buddy,' 'the pal,' 'the best friend,' 'the sidekick.' I was typed as that kind of guy all through the '70s, so I'd already lived through that once."

The actor sits down to discuss some of his most notable roles, from Stay Hungry to Krueger to Stranger Things.

Stay Hungry (1976)

One of Englund's earliest film appearances came playing a gym employee in this comedy-drama about bodybuilders from Five Easy Pieces director Bob Rafelson. The actor's co-stars included Jeff Bridges, Sally Field, and real-life Mr. Universe champion Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"I was his greaser. I was always oiling Arnold up in the background," says Englund. "I remember the squirt bottle and a towel. Arnold was this big sweet teddy bear who we all fell in love with."

The actor recalls that, after the end of the shoot in New Orleans, he and other cast members were keen to assist Schwarzenegger, who was himself just starting out on his movie career.

"We all wanted to take care of Arnold," says Englund. "Of course, when we got back to Hollywood, we realized that Arnold owned half of Ocean Park, between Santa Monica and Venice. He was already this unbelievably successful entrepreneur. So it was more like, 'Arnold, can I borrow money from you?' He didn't need any help."

Galaxy of Terror (1981)

Englund was cast as a crew member of the spaceship Quest in this low-budget science-fiction horror film from legendary b-movie producer Roger Corman, about a planet which kills people by bringing to life their worst fears. The film was shot at Corman's studio in an old lumberyard where the actor remembers having "this terrible dressing room, a plastic chair with cigarette burns on it, and one bent hanger for my own clothes."

Happy Days star Erin Moran and future Twin Peaks actress Grace Zabriskie also appeared in the film. Although, retrospectively, the most notable name on the project's cast and crew list belonged to that of its young production designer, James Cameron.

"Across from me was the art department, and there was a guy in there with hair down his back. He would be throwing out these drawings he was doing for one of the creatures in Galaxy of Terror," says Englund. "I would flatten the drawings out and pin them up because they were amazing stuff. Well, it was James Cameron. I wish I had kept it all now. Those would be so valuable."

V (1983-'85)

The actor received his first real taste of fame playing the amiable alien Willie on this internationally popular NBC show. Executive produced by Kenneth Johnson, who had previously created The Incredible Hulk series, V found planet Earth being visited by seemingly human-like extraterrestrials with a hidden agenda. (Spoiler alert: they're really giant lizards who want to turn everyone into dinner, though Willie turns out to be a good guy — or a good reptile anyway.)

Englund remembers asking Johnson for advice before auditioning for the role.

"I figured, well, this alien might be comedy relief, but I'm not really sure how to approach this," says the actor. "I said, 'Kenny, give me some advice here. Give me some help.' Ken Johnson looked at me and he said two words: 'Gene Wilder.' I went, 'Ah!' I just channeled Gene Wilder. There was a hesitancy, and a bit of a stutter, and an innocence. That was my audition. I got the part, and that's the show that made me an international actor."

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

The film that would introduce the world to Freddy Krueger was written and directed by Wes Craven, who had already terrified audiences with 1972's notorious The Last House on the Left and 1977's The Hills Have Eyes, among other genre tales.

Englund recalls that, before meeting Craven at his audition for the New Line Cinema-produced movie, he "half expected this guy [to be] all dressed in black, all rather goth." Instead? "I walk in the office and he's resplendent in Ralph Lauren," the actor continues. "He's got tortoise-shell reading glasses; a trimmed, immaculate beard; and he's this erudite raconteur."

Prior to the audition, Englund had made efforts to change the "tanned, blonde, curly" appearance he had presented on-screen for the previous decade.

"I had greased my hair down with some oil from under the hood of my car, and I'd taken a little bit of cigarette ash and dabbled it under my eyes," he recalls. "It's an old stage trick. It looks very natural. It didn't give me bags like I have now, but it sunk my eyes. My hair is thin and fine, so when I greased it back you could see the shape of my skull. I knew there was going to be a reveal in the film where Freddy shows his baldness, and I thought maybe that would help."

When Craven started telling Englund about his vision for the film, the actor stayed silent. "I was smart enough to zip my lips and shut up. I played a staring game with him," he says. "Wes telling me this vision of his, this haunting landscape of the nightmare, and [I was] trying not to blink my eyes so that they looked kind of strange. I think those were all the things that went into me getting that phone call on my answering machine: 'You got the part.' "

While Krueger's slasher icon contemporaries Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees were both portrayed by an array of actors, Englund kept on playing Freddy in sequel after sequel until the character was supposedly killed for good in 1991's Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare. The actor explains that he stuck with the franchise partly for financial reasons and partly because he enjoyed traveling the world to promote the movies.

"I was making good money on V, so it wasn't necessary for me to negotiate for Nightmare 1, or Nightmare 2 for that matter, because those projects were all overlapping," he explains. "So when I renegotiated, I was sort of starting at the bottom because I hadn't come in strong. Now I was known as Freddy, I wanted to be rewarded for it, so I stuck with it. I was also in love with the international aspect. I would shoot the films, and then I would go out and do international publicity, everywhere from Tokyo to Sydney, Australia, to London and Paris. I loved that."

The Phantom of the Opera (1989)

Englund would take a break from Freddy, but not from acting under heavy makeup. He played the titular role in director Dwight H. Little's adaptation of Gaston Leroux's classic tale, The Phantom of the Opera.

According to the actor, "Dwight and I had a couple of cocktails, and he wanted to do it [with] saturated color, like a great Hammer film, like the movies Dwight and I had seen at the drive-in while we tried to get to second base with a girl in the '60s. I really respected Dwight, and I thought, Well, I'm in good hands with him. But I said, 'The makeup's got to be great.' So I got the great Kevin Yagher, who worked with me on Nightmare on Elm Street and created the Chucky doll."

Little and Englund shot The Phantom of the Opera in Budapest with a cast that also included Bill Nighy, Jill Choelen, and Molly Shannon. "It was just a wonderful adventure," says Englund.

Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)

Having not directed an Elm Street movie since the first film, Craven returned to oversee this meta-slasher story, now considered something of a dry run for the filmmaker's Scream, which he would make just a couple of years later. Englund portrays a revived version of Freddy who breaks into the "real" world to haunt Craven; New Line Pictures founder Bob Shaye; and franchise actors Heather Langenkamp, John Saxon, and Englund; all of whom play themselves.

"It was a reunion and, of course, we all got paid very well," says Englund.

At one point during the shoot, Langenkamp and Englund were forced to work with eels, which were doubling for snakes.

"Wes couldn't get the eels to do anything," says the actor. "We were into lunch hour, and, of course, in Hollywood when you go into lunch hour everybody gets more money in their paycheck. It's called a 'meal penalty.' Wes was yelling at us to get the shot because he was pissed off about the 'eel penalty.' Wes [was] the horrific punster from hell."

Urban Legend (1998)

The hook of director Jamie Blanks' film involves characters being killed in the manner of well-known urban legends. The movie starred Jared Leto, Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart, Joshua Jackson, Tara Reid, and Englund, the latter of which embraced his status as a horror elder statesman by playing a college professor.

"After I took the makeup off in '94, when we'd done the first battery of Nightmare on Elm Street movies, I had aged and my face was turning into an interesting character," says Englund. "I was no longer this kid that I'd been all through the '70s, and I was maturing as an actor, so I could segue into Vincent Price-Christopher Lee parts. Urban Legend, I'm very proud of that movie. I loved the conceit of it. It's a great little film and I think it really holds up."

Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

Horror fans had long been agitating for a movie that saw slasher icons Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees fight each other. Englund first came across the notion back in the mid '80s when a biker showed off a tattoo of the two horror titans battling.

"[He] ripped off his jean jacket with his Hells Angels colors on his back, pulled his pants down, took his shirt off, and said, 'Look, look!' " remembers the actor. "He had a full-torso tattoo of Freddy wrestling with Jason, from his neck to his knees. That's 1984! This percolating, Freddy vs. Jason thing [was] going on for years until it actually seeped into the corridors of New Line Cinema and they began to consider it."

After a lengthy development process, New Line hired Bride of Chucky filmmaker Ronnie Yu to direct Freddy vs. Jason in which Englund's Krueger took on Ken Kirzinger's Voorhees. The result earned $82 million in the U.S., making the team-up the most popular Freddy-featuring film of all time.

"They went through a lot of scripts. They couldn't quite get it right," says Englund. "It took the genius of Ronnie Yu. I'm really proud of that film. It's really fun to see on a nice big flat screen with the sound turned up and some cold pizza."

2001 Maniacs (2005)

Hostel filmmaker Eli Roth produced this remake of 1964's Two Thousand Maniacs! in which Englund and A Nightmare on Elm Street co-star Lin Shaye played Deep South killers. 2001 Maniacs was directed by Tim Sullivan, a former New Line development executive.

"Tim came up to me one day and told me he was writing this script, based on one of the earliest kind of punk-horror films, and he was writing this part for me," says Englund. "Lo and behold, years later, he came to me with a completed script. He had backing and a lot of important people as producers, so I was really happy to do it."

The movie was shot in Georgia, a locale chosen at the very last minute. "We were supposed to do it in LA, and I think there was a fire where we were going to shoot our exteriors, so we had to reconfigure everything," says the actor. "We rushed off to Georgia and found this town made of old, antebellum buildings. So that was the home of the maniacs!"

Stranger Things season 4 (2022)

In season 4 of Netflix's science-fiction horror show, Englund played the blind Victor Creel, a resident of Pennhurst Asylum. A longtime fan of Stranger Things, the actor originally auditioned for the season 3 role of Larry Kline, the mayor of Hawkins, who would ultimately be played by Cary Elwes.

"I kind of got steered wrong on it, I think," he says of that audition. "I thought they wanted it like the mayor in Jaws, like a used car salesman in a plaid jacket. I think what they really wanted was sleek, '80s, power-tie guy, which Cary's perfect for."

Englund was delighted to learn that he would get to work with Maya Hawke, having enjoyed her portrayal of Scoops Ahoy employee Robin Buckley on the show. "I was really impressed with some work she and Joe Keery did in season 3," he says. "Then, she was right there, on the other side of the cell bars. I was like a fanboy."

Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story premieres on Screambox and Digital June 6. Watch the film's trailer below.

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