Crispin Glover admits he did 'Friday the 13th' for the paycheck: 'I needed a job'

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 09: Actor Crispin Glover attends the Build Series to discuss "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" at Build Studio on May 09, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Jim Spellman/Getty Images)
Actor Crispin Glover attends the Build Series to discuss "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" at Build Studio on May 09, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Jim Spellman/Getty Images)

As a struggling young actor, Crispin Glover didn't exactly look at a role in 1984’s Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter as a golden opportunity to enter the sacred terrain of a beloved horror franchise.

"Just before I got Friday the 13th, I had moved out of my parents' house, I only had a certain amount of money and I was getting low on funds," Crispin told Yahoo Entertainment while promoting his latest film, Lucky Day. "And then I got Friday the 13th: Part 4. I needed a job.

"I needed to work. I needed to continue working."

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Despite his motives, Glover earned a special place in the hearts of horror fans for his performance as the ill-fated, goofy-dancing, future GIF Jimmy, which came one year before his breakout turn as the bullied George McFly in the 1985 classic Back to the Future.

And while countless aspiring actors have admitted to taking whatever work they could get (and many have started off in lackluster horror movies), few speak of the paycheck gigs as openly as Glover, who also has no great love for the slasher genre as a whole.

"I've only seen two of those films, I saw the original film [1980's Friday the 13th, the first film to introduce iconic masked killer Jason Voorhees] and the one that I'm in," Glover explained. "I remember when I saw the original one, not too long before it I'd seen the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre [1974], and when I saw the first Friday the 13th, I thought, 'Well, this is extremely derivative.'

"I liked the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre very much," he continued. "There's a whole industry that's basically what they call the slasher industry. I find it derivative of that particular original Texas Chain Saw Massacre."