Robert Englund
Robert Englund
Robert Barton Englundis an American film and stage actor, voice-actor, singer, and director, best known for playing the character of infamous serial killer Freddy Krueger, in the Nightmare on Elm Street film series. He received a Saturn Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors in 1987 and A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master in 1988. Englund is a classically trained actor...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth6 June 1947
CityGlendale, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I'm an actor. Actors are supposed to act.
While I still do a lot of horror, it doesn't feel to me like I'm repeating myself. I like to stay interested. I'm kind of turning into one of those elder statesmen, like a Vincent Price or a Donald Pleasence. I like to think of myself alongside those guys.
We all have to change with the times... it keeps you younger; it's a new challenge.
I'm a Hollywood kid, and I know that there are only so many stories. Only so many tales around the campfire that we have to tell. Then we have to regurgitate them. Our grandparents' movies were all remakes of silent films - we forget that, but it's true.
I used to drive up from theatre in Michigan to Stratford, Ontario to watch every show. I idolized the actors from Stratford. I was very influenced by them because they would come down and work at my theatre and get time on their American Equity union cards.
I've done 'Two Gentlemen of Verona,' I've understudied Iago in 'Othello.' I've done Mercutio in 'Romeo and Juliet.'
There'll always be movies that are meant for the big screen, and they should be seen that way.
As a result of playing Freddy Krueger, I can remember having to look at some medical books, and at some of the disfigurement that fire can cause on people, because they were the source material for some of the prosthetic makeup that I wore. That aided and abetted this fear of death by fire. Which is sort of what happened to Fred Krueger.
The technologies of convenience are making our sphere of exploration and experience smaller.
I'm scared by the enormous amount of bottled water being consumed today, instead of people drinking filtered tap water. Did you know that nearly 90 percent of those plastic bottles are not recycled and wind up in landfills where it takes thousands of years for the plastic to decompose?
We were having a sleepover when I was eight or nine, and we all got to stay up late and watch the original 'Frankenstein.' It was uncensored, so as a child, I saw the scene where he throws the little girl into the lake, and that freaked me out. Though not as much as when he hangs the hunchback.
I know there's a certain love and affection for the homemade on the Internet, and I'm all for that, too, and I appreciate it in alternative music, and I appreciate it in B-movies and in Sundance, independent films.
Had I not done Shakespeare, Pinter, Moliere and things such as 'Godspell' - I played Judas in a hugely successful production before I did 'Elm Street' - I'd probably be on a psychiatrist's couch saying: 'Freddy ruined me.' But I'd already done 13 movies and years of non-stop theatre.
When I was a boy, I read a terrible article in a big weekly American magazine called the 'Saturday Evening Post.' In the middle of this family magazine on my parent's coffee table was an article about this family that was camping, and they were all mauled by a grizzly bear in their sleeping bags.