Horror icon Robert Englund has starred in a variety of different films, with his most famous being one where his face remained mostly hidden, which is Freddy Krueger in the A Nightmare on Elm Street series. The actor stars as a much different character in the upcoming horror film Nightworld, with the star sharing his excitement at portraying such a different role from his previous characters.
At this point in his career, the actor explained he’s much more interested in playing eccentric characters than a villainous slasher, a desire he got to embrace with Nightworld.
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“As an older actor, I began playing the professor and the scientist and the stepfather and the old poacher, you know? And the psychoanalyst,” Englund confessed to PopCulture.com. “Because of my dues in fantasy and science-fiction and horror, I’m allowed these roles now. I’m asked to play these parts. Like, the one we’re talking about, Nightworld, is an example of that. It’s sort of my fussy little Eastern European contemporary Van Helsing character, you know?”
The film follows a former cop, Brett Irlam (Jason London, Dazed and Confused), who takes a job as head of security at an old apartment building in Bulgaria’s capital city, Sofia, and immediately begins to experience a series of bizarre and terrifying events. As he starts to delve deep into the building’s sinister history and investigate its shadowy owners and past employees, Brett quickly uncovers a malevolent force nestled deep in the bowels of the building, a force that will not stop at anything to be set free into our world. Englund stars as the mysterious Jacob in this thriller about an afterlife darker than you ever imagined.
The actor seemed as surprised as anyone that these would be the characters he’d eventually play after spending 20 years wearing makeup for the Nightmare on Elm Street series.
“When I got out of the makeup in 2003, you know, I’d aged and I kind of got this craggy, Scottish face, and my beard came in white when I grew it in,” Englund revealed. “It had been a little bit kind of red and brown before that. With my weird dirty blonde hair, now my beard came in really nice and gray with some white streaks in it, and I looked sort of like Max von Sydow. I looked a little bit like old George C. Scott. I looked a little bit like Trevor Howard, you know, the old English actor.”
You can see Englund in all his “fussy little Eastern European contemporary Van Helsing” glory when Nightworld debuts on VOD and in select theaters October 20.
