What makes Freddy Krueger such a horrible character? What makes him scare you to death? You can't get rid of the guy. He never goes away.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I couldn't find an actor to play Freddy Krueger with the sense of ferocity I was seeking. Everyone was too quiet, too compassionate towards children. Then Robert Englund auditioned.
In most horror films, you don't really get to understand why this character is the way he is.
Robert Englund's done an amazing job over the years playing Freddy. Everybody that's a fan of 'Nightmare' loves Robert and you know so that's a challenge when you've got to step in a big man's shoes like that, so it's scary but it's also exciting.
He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.
He is scary as the butcher, but you will not meet a lovelier, more interesting guy than Danny Huston. His stories leave me spellbound. I adore him.
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.
In a weird way, that's the beauty of being an actor. You get to live out things that you're afraid of, and you get to say, 'Well, maybe I can get to the end of it and survive it intact and I can be the hero of my own story.' It's kind of a way of exorcising fear.
There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.
In a certain sense, this guy - who is one of the most evil people in the book - he's not really that bad at running the show, because he knows what he's doing, he's smart and he's got the big picture in mind. He's like the Godfather.
I actually am grateful for Freddy Krueger, because the big surprise to me - with that sort of double punch of science fiction TV series and then the 'Nightmare on Elm Street' phenomenon - was that I got an international celebrity out of it.