Read the continuation in Part 2

HorrorCrush.com recently had the opportunity to sit down with one of the biggest legends in the Horror community, Robert Englund, the man who brought Freddy Krueger to life! We had a long-ranging interview that kept going and going with amazing stories from Roberts amazing career. We talked for so long that we have made the interview into 2 parts! Robert is celebrating his new book HOLLYWOOD MONSTER: A WALK DOWN ELM STREET WITH THE MAN OF YOUR DREAMS which comes out October 13th, on Simon and Schuster. Click now to pre-order it off Amazon! Additionally, Robert Englund will be the guest of honor at Chicago’s Flashback Weekend Oct 23-25th! In Part 1 Robert discusses his early life as an actor, going from a classically trained Shakespearean to slowly realizing that film was his calling…

So I Know A Big Part Of Your New Book, Hollywood Monster Is About Your Early Days As An Actor. Can You Go Back To That Time Period? Your Mindset? What Was It Like Trying To Get Your Foot In The Door?

Well you know, in the theatre it was pretty easy for me. I was in the sort of cradle of a professional theatre and an acting academy. It was pretty easy for me to blend from the professional training right into the professional company. This was in Rochester, MI which is out there by Bloomfield Hills in Birmingham, MI. Its a suburb of Detroit and also the home of Oakland University which at that time was referred to as the Harvard of the Midwest. That began going very shortly after going to New York and Chicago for auditions and that was a little more competitive and more exciting and I landed roles pretty easily in professional theatre companies. I was down at Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival where Tom Hanks is from and I starred in Godspell there and some other Shakespearean productions, and some George Bernard Shaw and you know, I was pretty happy. I might have even remained in the theatre in New York or doing regional theatre but I encountered the same kind of politics in the theatre that one encounters in all kinds of business and I was a little young and naive at that time, I guess it shocked me a bit in my youth and my naivety. Around the same time, being a California boy and having gone to school down here at some of the state colleges and universities, UCLA, and taking acting classes down here, I actually had a theatre down here in my college days in Hollywood. I was watching TV one night and I realized that the guys I’d gone to college with were working for Roger Corman. I write this in the book. And in fact the movie BOXCAR BERTHA which was one of Martin Scorsese’s brilliant films - and I remember seeing it and watching it one night and you know drinking a half a bottle of wine after a show and I think my feelings were really hurt, because a role that had been promised to me wasn’t going to go to me. I think it was the Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. And I remember seeing all the names of my buddies, and I figured if I’m going to put up with all of these politics of the theatre, I might as well do it in Hollywood where the pay is  better.

(LAUGHS)

I was a little homesick so I came back to Hollywood. This is 1971 I think, and I moved down to the beach just north of the old Santa Monica pier, near the old stables of Will Rogers. I sort of began here to reacquaint myself with the kind of history of Hollywood and old movies and film. In those days and I think they still have them up north in San Francisco, we had them everywhere down here, only a few are left now, and those were all the great revival theatres, where on any given night you could go out and see a double bill of film noir, or Preston Sturgess movies or go out and see a couple of great screwball comedies. So I was sort of like catching up to the whole history of Hollywood and wetting my appetite for film again because I had been kind of a cloistered snob classically trained theatre artist. I immersed myself not only in the classics but in the contemporary work of Harold Pinter and Sam Shepard and those were sort of my gods back then.

I went on my first audition in Hollywood - a wonderful old character actress got me with her agent and I worked with her in HELLO DOLLY and she’s famous. You used to see her in everything. She was always playing the nosy next door neighbor or the landlady and she got me a really good agent. I went on my very first interview and I got a starring role with a very big actor then - Jan Michael Vincent who had a huge hit called THE MECHANIC with Charles Bronson which was sort of a homoerotic hitman film which was during the violent Charles Bronson movie craze of the early seventies. He had a huge hit for Disney then called THE WORLDS GREATEST ATHLETE and I did this movie with him and Pamela Sue Martin who would go on and do DYNASTY and she actually had a couple of independent movies then one dealing with abortion callled OUR TIME and of course she would go on to be Fallon on DYNASTY and Nancy Drew. I did this little movie with all the best technicians out of 20th Century Fox and the wonderful director Daniel Petrie who was practically the whitest man in America, but had single handedly discovered the greatest Black African-American actors in the country and had directed A RAISIN IN THE SUN. Daniel Petrie starred with me in this movie and I went on to the American south in Spring of 73 and started in this movie called BUSTER AND BILLIE and got a good review in Time Magazine and I never stopped working since!

That’s Pretty Amazing! What Do You Attribute That To?

I think it had something to do with that year of me  watching movies and acclimating myself to Hollywood and hanging out with future famous critics and future screenwriters and kind of making that transition from sort of “theater speak” to “film speak” sort of from the world of Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw and moving into the world of contemporary indepenent cinema. For instance, the world of Jack Nicholson and FIVE EASY PIECES and all of the classic Hollywood films and just obsessing over that for a year.

The other thing that I thought was strange is that I only played one Southerner in my life and that was on stage in SUMMER IN SMOKE and next thing I knew I was typecast as a Southerner for the first half of the Seventies! Whether I was playing best friends or sidekicks or red necks, white trash or bad guys- ya’ know so people wonder what its like being typecasted in horror movies but  I was typecast as something else for a while. I just started out kind of being typecast as a Southerner. You know which was kind of strange. I don’t want to make it sound like an easy transition but when I look back, I mean, I know actors that didnt start working till’ their late 30’s and a lot of them were quite bitter by that time and I went to work right away.  I was starring in movies at the age of 24. And even before that I’d been starring in plays professionally for 5 years. So I guess I had it pretty easy my whole life. You know, I’m a funny looking guy but semi-versatile and I guess I’ve been very fortunate.

And I’m Guessing That Led To You Wanting To Write Hollywood Monster?

One of the reasons I wanted to write HOLLYWOOD MONSTER was because I wanted my fans out there to know that you can have your dream and you can follow your dreams. That its not always just waiting tables for 20 years and you kind of have to learn how to go with the flow and I also wanted people and a lot of my horror fans and my genre fans and my science fiction fans that there was a huge life for me in the industry before me. I also had kind of an interesting life after Freddy for me. Whether its working in Europe or directing or working on the internet now or you know, writing books or screenplays. So you know whatever my next job will be and I wanted to kind of get that all out before  I got too old and my brain turns into jelly and starts to forget some very interesting anecdotes that I had. And the other interesting thing is a lot of decision making had to go on with what stories I wanted to leave in and what stories I wanted to leave out. Working with a co-writer I talk a lot like I’m talking to you now and I might mention five things, and that’s the deal you make with your co-writer. You kind of get your shape to the book. And the stories, the tales, and anecdotes are selected to be made in the book because otherwise it would be a thousand pages.

(continued in part 2)

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