Veteran character actor Robert Englund was born in Glendale, California, to Janis and John Kent Englund, an aeronautics engineer. Since 1973, Robert has appeared in over 75 feature films and starred in four TV series. He has starred alongside Oscar-winners Henry Fonda, Susan Sarandon and Jeff Bridges. Since 1984 he's achieved international fame as the iconic boogeyman Freddy Krueger in the hit franchise A Nightmare on Elm Street and its seven sequels. Englund has guest starred in hundreds of hours of TV most recently Bones, Criminal Minds and Hawaii 5-0. He will soon be seen starring in the horror film Fear Clinic, and the English thriller The Last Showing, he can be heard as the voice of the Evil Beaver in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon show.
Attended UCLA (for three classes) and The Academy of Dramatic Art (in Rochester, MI). Other Academy of Dramatic Art graduates include Curtis Armstrong and Richard Riehle.
Parents: Kent and Janis (nee McDonald) Englund.
Member of Actors Equity Association (1968-), Screen Actors Guild (1973-), American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Directors Guild of America. Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
One-time TV/radio host.
Married twice, the first occurred during his college heyday. He met his second wife Nancy Booth while working on his feature directorial debut 976-EVIL.
Ranked the #40 top villain for the American Film Institutions Top 100 list of 100 Heroes and Villains for his role as Freddy Krueger.
He is of Swedish, Danish, Scottish, English, and German ancestry. His surname is Swedish.
Robert is an honors graduate from the Academy of Dramatic Art at Oakland University in Rochester, MI. Prior to that he attended Cal State University, Northridge and UCLA.
Is an avid "King of the Hill" fan.
Cannot, despite popular belief, speak Swedish fluently.
His performance as Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street is ranked #51 on Premiere Magazines 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.
He is a keen surfer, and has been shown on "Entertainment Tonight" talking about surfing.
Shares graduation from Granada Hills High School with actor Ossie Beck and football player John Elway.
Wrote an unused treatment for A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors .
Father helped design the U-2 spy plane.
In 1973 he returned to the Academy of Dramatic Art to teach a stunts and stage fight class while appearing at the nearby regional professional Meadow Brook Theatre.
While a student at the Academy of Dramatic Art he spent a summer teaching at Cranbrook Theatre School in Bloomfield Hills.
Lives in Laguna Beach, California.
An only child.
Was considered for the role of Mr. Joshua in Lethal Weapon .
When I was 9, I went to a birthday party. We were supposed to see a,cowboy movie, but the programming got screwed up and we saw,The Bad Seed (1956) instead. Horrifying. For years I was,frightened of girls with pigtails.
I think superheroes today are like whistle blowers.
The last time we had Freddy in reality was part two and Freddy sort of,went out on his own.
Most of my nightmares involve me forgetting my lines in a stage play.
Many great horror stories are period pieces and English actors have a,facility for historic characters.
Jeff Bridges taught me a lot about how to keep a scene fresh.
I would like to see the technology used to explore more period horror,genre works, for example, E. A. Poe.
I have an Italian comedy at the Venice Film Festival.
I always get inspiration from whatever characters say about my,character.
If they do something like that, maybe a Freddy Krueger fan, a girl, a,really sick goth girl starts killing kids herself and Freddy has to put,a stop to it, or they have to fight it out.
The modern horror audience is wise to our tricks this lets it in on the,gag.
Freddy Krueger is a great politically incorrect villain, the logo,character of a franchise spawned by a low-budget movie, made by some,reasonably artistic people who came up with a gimmick. And it is a,great gimmick - the idea that a bogey man, a revenge-motif serial,killer could manifest himself in the subconscious of the children of,the people that did him wrong. Freddy likes it, he is having fun doing,it. He is unapologetic about that. You have a punk-rock nihilistic,villain.
Fear has been good to yours truly.
Halloween starts earlier and earlier, just like Christmas.
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.
