The contribution Robert Englund has made to not only horror but to cinema in general is more than most actors living or dead will ever come close to. Over a ten-year period from 1984-1994, the original run of the Nightmare on Elm Street series of films, Englund created a character in Freddy Krueger so indelible in the cinematic zeitgeist he’s recognized worldwide even in silhouette. Unlike other horror icons like Jason, Michael Myers and Leatherface, Freddy was more than just some costumed bogeyman. He was a complex, cunning, and clever killer who did for dreams what Jaws did for the ocean. But most of all Freddy was hilarious.
Robert Englund anchored the Elm Street franchise of films that were made, even in immediate retrospect, on a shoestring budget that went on to amass nearly half a billion dollars in worldwide box office. New Line, the studio that brought us The Nightmare on Elm Street films, not only became solvent financially but are affectionately known as the house that Freddy built. For those of you unfamiliar with the Elm Street franchise it’s about a neighborhood child murderer named Freddy Krueger. After getting out of prison on a technicality for his horrible crimes the furious community of grieving parents dole out their own brand of vigilante justice burning Freddy to death only to later have his ghost return seemingly in perpetuity to hunt and kill more Elm Street kids in their dreams.
The movies are fun, crowd pleasing, and great examples of true old-school horror that still holds up today. The small budgets forced the filmmakers to rely heavily on practical effects over CGI which lent to a gonzo realism most horror fans prefer to the video game style reality of so many films today. In other words, when Freddy’s on fire, he’s really on fire…more on that later.
There is no other horror character depicted in feature films that is quite as iconic as Robert Englund’s portrayal of Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. To commemorate the 40-year anniversary milestone he will receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on the most appropriate day of the year, Halloween, and Warner Bros will release a special edition 4K collection of all seven films.
Although our interview was set to focus on the 40th anniversary of the Elm Street franchise and his upcoming (and long overdue) Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame fittingly bestowed on Halloween day 2025, we luckily moved around to a variety of topics covering the many decades Englund has been in the business.
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FOG!: You got to work with some great directors on the series of Elm Street films, obviously Wes Craven, but Steven Hopkins, and Renny Harlin as well. Can you tell us what it was like working with such a group of diverse and up incoming talents?
ROBERT ENGLUND: I did two movies for Renny, (in addition to Nightmare on Elm Street 4: Dream Warriors) I did (The Adventures of) Ford Fairlane.
I had to replace Billy Idol who crashed his Harley up in Laurel Canyon…I literally got the call at four in the afternoon, they had this emergency, and I was working the next day…during filming I went back to do a high kick in a hero angle in a fight scene with Andrew Dice Clay…all I had to do was kick over the camera…thinking this will give me this one great shot as a cutaway…I did it and it looked great, but I got a double hernia. Whenever I think of Ford Fairlane and Renny, I think of my double hernia.
Speaking of physicality, there was an immense physicality to the role of Freddy Krueger. I know you came from the theater, how did working on stage help prepare you for the rigors of what is obviously quite a workout?
I had been doing it for a while. People tend to forget but I did a lot of movies in the 70s.
I had several big fight scenes in Stay Hungry (1976) …and it was actor with actor fight scenes as opposed to an actor duking it out with a stuntman…and they came off really well I’m really proud of my fight scenes…I did lots and lots of movies where I’d been slammed around a bit.
Englund standing between Jeff Bridges and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Stay Hungry
Richard Gere broke my nose, I think Kris Kristofferson broke my nose, Paul Sorvino caught me with chains around my ankle and I tore my ankle out really bad…I learned not to wear character shoes on a movie, I was wearing disco boots on that movie (Bloodbrothers 1978) had I not been wearing disco boots I would have survived. I couldn’t move like Robert Englund because I had these sort of cheesy mid-seventies New York disco boots playing some cheesy Irish gang kid who was having it out with Richard Gere because I was sleeping with his girlfriend. So, I had done a lot of that so by the time Freddy came around I was a reasonably seasoned veteran.
And in terms of theater specifically?
I’d also done a long huge standing room only turn away audiences run of the musical Godspell that was very physical. (The production) had these giant chain link fences that went up into the ceiling, we had to dive off of them. I remember having to do a curtain call that had a flip in it and used an old gymnastic trick.
…I was pretty seasoned by the time Freddy came around…I was also around the time of my early thirties when you’re sort of very fit naturally, you know before you have to start going to the gym! You’re still kind of rubbery and all your joints are lubricated…so it wasn’t that difficult but the thing I remember spooking me in terms of the stunt work on Nightmare on Elm Street was fire.
Fire stunts are no joke.
I don’t think I’d worked with fire before. I’d hung off a helicopter, been thrown down an elevator shaft, and done some fight scenes, and been hurt, but I’d never worked with fire.
You know when you’re on a soundstage fire in the first take uses up a lot of oxygen, and if they don’t go and open that big goddamn door and let the air come in to clean it out, kind of douche out the set, (especially when) they’re trying to rush and get another take real quick, there’s less oxygen with every take. And everybody gets a little heady, not quite a hundred percent, and I started to notice that.
Plus, when you’re an actor you know how cool it is when you’re on fire…I had arms on fire…and hands on fire. I was bathed in this Australian water gel…and all the stuntmen who don’t have the emotional connection of an actor know how to count, they’re always counting in their head it’s like dancing for them…they count and then they know the water gel is gonna start to burn off and then get hot it’s gonna hurt…but I was out there with that gel all over me and I knew how cool I looked, I think this was on Nightmare 2, and I forgot to count and it got really, really, hot…later on the same film out in Pasadena… I had to walk through this big exploding hedge that caught on fire… through this arbor of Freddy sort of exiting the party “you’re all my children now!” and I go through this gate.
We did it three or four times and every time it got hotter and the flames got bigger but we got it, nailed it… After we finish, I’m in the trailer and we’re taking the makeup off with Kevin Yeager…and the glue, medical adhesive they use on latex, had completely melted and adhered itself to my own skin. We couldn’t get it off.
Oh God.
We literally worked til dawn to get it off. It was stuck to my ear and the side of my neck and the back of my neck. I was pretty raw. But that was a lesson with the fire stunts which is why I was really alert when we did Freddy vs. Jason (2003) because there was a lot of fire stunts in that.
The irony is Ken Kirzinger who played Jason, he actually started smoking after a series of interior shots we were doing, the fire bars behind him had gotten bigger, bigger, and bigger as we progressed with the scene and I literally had to call a “cut” because I could see he was starting to smoke. Ken’s a stuntman, he knows this stuff, but he couldn’t feel anything under that massive costume Jason has. Fire is spooky!
What was it like working with the legendary John Saxon?
We could not have made Nightmare 1 without John’s name and Ronnie Blakely’s name. Ronnie had the Oscar nomination for Nashville (1975) and had just done a big tour with Bob Dylan and John of course was a household name. He kind of transcended several generations, he was a teen idol in the early fifties, and he knew James Dean and Elvis Presley. He used to play touch football in Glendale in a park with Elvis Presley. A lot of people came on board in his second act which was Enter the Dragon (1973) with Bruce Lee but before that he had done Robert Redford’s first movie (War Hunt 1962) and had worked with Jimmy Stewart…Clint Eastwood…Marlon Brando…so I got all the stories from John when we made part 7.
Robert Englund & John Saxon participating in a Q & A at Weekend of Horrors 5 (2011)
I was a friend of John’s by then. We could kid a little bit and he really opened up to tell me a lot of stories…
Speaking of big stars, you got to kill Burt Reynolds on screen in Hustle.
Almost point blank!… I shot Burt Reynolds. Robert Aldrich directed that film, it’s actually quite a good little film. Ben Johnson, one of my favorite actors of all time played the Korean (war) Vet, Eileen Brennan co-starred… they were all in that movie, it was the first time I’d shot anybody in a movie.
One of the arms handlers had put in a bigger load than normal of the blank and they were doing that “Dirty Harry” shot with the gun coming right at you, forced perspective…and we did it, and the load was too big and we blew back a little flap of Burt’s toupee. Oh God, and the paper confetti went everywhere, and I thought “This is it, I’m never gonna work again, back to the theater.” But Burt literally brought me into his trailer…and he poured me a finger of Bushmills and he said “Look kid, when we get back in there, I want you to crawl all over me, I want you to be as pimply, and as awful, and as nasty as you can be. That’s why Bob hired you, it’s no big deal, it wasn’t your fault. That could happen to anybody.”
He could have been a complete asshole but he wasn’t he was a gentlemen. He was so nice… he knew I was punishing myself. But I’ll tell you, it also began probably a twenty-five-year love affair with Bushmills!
Has anyone ever shown up to your house on Halloween dressed as Freddy?
Oh yeah, but the newest thing is the girls. And they dress as Freddy in a miniskirt which is part of the sweater.
I was recently at a Halloween party with a co-worker and this is what she wore. (I show Robert the photo of my co-worker Sydney dressed as Freddy)
Sydney Cooper and FOG! writer Fred Shahadi as The Grabber.
Oh, she gets more candy than you do! There’s a whole series of them. There are the girls that have scratches on their face on one side, like Freddy got too close. Then there’s the girls who are goth, no scratches. Then there’s girls where half of their face is burned and the girls who go for the full burn. And there’s girls that wear the big clunky boots like Freddy. Some girls wear stilettos, some girls have significant holes near their cleavage in the sweater…it’s all these variations of the “Freddyette.”
Is there a door that has been opened for you that otherwise might not have been because of Freddy?
Simultaneously and just before Freddy was a science fiction show I did called “V”. I was getting loads of fan mail. I was huge internationally in Germany, Japan, Sweden, UK, and Italy especially.
And then I did Freddy and Freddy was international instantly. New Line didn’t even know what to do at that point they’d never had an international hit. I had two back-to-back international hits. I learned very quickly that in Spain, Italy, and the UK…and even France, they really respect horror more than Americans. Not that they love it any more, we love it too, but we give horror actors that table by the back door of the kitchen in the commissary, whereas over there they understand all the subtleties, and all the levels, and all the symbolism of horror.
They look on it as another genre equal to gangster movies, and westerns, and film noir and everything else. I became international overnight because of Freddy, it was the first-time people put a name to my face and I was swiftly asked to do films over there. I did tons of medium and low budget horror all over the world. I’ve done fourteen or fifteen movies in Europe now. It was a vacuum I sort of stepped into…it was a good decision and it was the right thing for me to do…and when you get older it’s really fun to go make a movie in Rome, or London, or Madrid! Oh God it’s so much fun.
You had mentioned stigma of a horror actor, having come from RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts) did you ever get any pushback from your theater friends for doing Freddy?
There is that thing when you finally leave the theater…but I didn’t abandon the theater for Hollywood, I abandoned the theater because I encountered the same kind of politics with casting and everything that exists in Hollywood. I kind of thought that the theater was this temple, I was naive. I was very young, so when I did experience it, it kind of broke my heart…But it all worked out because now I get to go around the world and celebrate Nightmare on Elm Street’s 40th anniversary!
This has been an absolute treat for me, I’m a huge fan. I’ll be cheering you on when you get your Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Cheer me on, trick or treat!
Trick or treat!
Fred Shahadi is an award-winning filmmaker, playwright,
and television writer living in Los Angeles.
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