Robert Englund Sends a Valentine to Horror Fans This Halloween

You've been in this business for a number of years - what made you choose to write your autobiography 'Hollywood Monster' now?

"They're remaking 'Nightmare on Elm Street' - they're remaking 'V' - those were my two big hits 25 years ago. On top of that, I'm getting on. I realized that I kind of have a nice survey of the last quarter century in Hollywood, and the first ten years of the millennium. It makes sense to me to get all those anecdotes out and all those memories out, while I could still do it. "

"I wanted to remind my fans that there's more to Robert Englund than Freddy. I have nothing against Freddy, and I dwell extensively on each 'Nightmare on Elm Street,' and backstage stories and anecdotes - and I also talk about other horror movies that I've done. I wanted to get that all out there and organize it. I thought that if there ever was a time, this seemed like the right year to do it."

"I wanted to have a valentine out there for the fans this Halloween. And I hope when the paperback comes out, the people will drag a dog-eared copy down to the shore. It's a pretty quick read, a pretty fun Hollywood memoir."

This is a season of shocking memoirs - I'm going to assume you don't reveal an affair with your own dad in this book.

"Didn't sleep with Daddy and you can't see Alaska from my front porch. No way, Jose."

Is there anything you think will be especially surprising to people about the parts of you that aren't Freddy Krueger?

"I was in it for the girls. I talk about the drama department parties - it was girls, 5-1. I would go to the jock parties, because I was on the swim team and the baseball team and I was an avid surfer. Those parties were like 5-1 guys. You'd get puked on by some guy on the football team."



So your odds were better in drama...

"And they were the best girls! They were mysterious girls. They were smart girls."

"And I talk about how Mark Hamill, in the late '70s, taught me how to relax and enjoy, lighten up. We'd get drunk and watch 'Mary Tyler Moore' reruns in the afternoon and pray that our agents would call."

You always seemed unique in the holy trinity of horror icons. Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and Freddy - you were the only one who resembled his character - no real mask, your own eyes were visible. Isn't the result that you have a household name but most people could never tell you who played Jason?

"I talk about the eyes [in my book]. My first movie, I was supposed to wear contact lenses - I was playing an albino. This is back in 1973, and I fought not to wear them, because I have green eyes, the contacts were red, and red and green make brown. I look more like an albino if I squint. So I fought it, and I looked back when I wrote the book, and thought - that's pretty courageous. To tell the director of 'Raisin in the Sun,' 'No, I'm not going to wear these.' And he said, 'You're right, Robert, eyes are the windows to the soul. Lose 'em.'That gave me a great sense of confidence."

"I try not to wear them so much as Freddy, because there's so much makeup, I start to look like a doll if I put contacts in. It makes him doll-like. I do use my own eyes, and it is my face that the makeup is conceived from and designed off of. An older, uglier, acne-scarred version of me.... and I did bring some theater tricks to it. I obviously played with the voice, and I physicalized him - I used a little bit of Klaus Kinski and Jimmy Cagney. Gangster films - because I had to live up to the frame around me, which was surrealistic and stylized."

You worked with Johnny Depp in the first 'Nightmare,' when he was just starting out. Was he just another pretty kid, or did you sense that he had something remarkable?

"The thing about Johnny - you know the expression 'some people are too nice for this world?' I remember Johnny then, and I've run into him subsequently in a bar or two in L.A. He really was so polite. I think he called people ma'am and sir. And he really looked younger than he was, at the time. He didn't talk young, though... I realized he was an old soul."

'Nightmare on Elm Street' is being remade with a new Freddy - how do you feel about the new version, and Jackie Earle Haley picking up the role you made famous?

"Hollywood remakes everything, that comes with the territory. It's like the casting couch. And if we didn't have remakes and sequels, we wouldn't have James Cameron's 'Aliens.' I think John Carpenter's 'The Thing' is a miraculous film."

"I'm curious to see the remake of the original 'Nightmare on Elm Street.' I've been a fan of Jackie Earle Haley since a movie called 'Breaking Away.' Jackie's just splendid in it... I thought Jackie was the best thing in 'Watchmen.'"

"It's a very exciting cast, and it's fair to say I'm looking forward to it. I do believe, of all the recent remakes, one that could certainly benefit from the new technology of CGI - the dream sequences will benefit from that. I'm curious and I wish them well. I'm just so happy they didn't pass the baton to some anonymous stuntman. I think that Jackie putting on the hat and the boots and - oh God, that makeup, poor Jackie - I'm really honored to be followed by an actor of that caliber."

"Every generation experiences something new, and reinterprets something new, and that's the way the world spins."

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