User blog:ARTaylor/Robert Englund Retires From Freddy Krueger

Robert Englund has retired from his most iconic role, that of the nightmarish terror of Elm Streets all over the country: Frederick Charles Krueger. Best known as Freddy, Englund began playing the character in 1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street. He was based on nightmares and childhood fears of director Wes Craven. He became an instant icon due to his red and green stripped sweater, brown fedora, knife-fingered glove, and supernatural abilities.

Englund is one of the horror genre's rare actors to have kept with the franchise through eight more films and television series. Throughout the films, Englund grew more prominent with each sequel. Krueger's powers grew, he became more outspoken and witty, and his backstory was explored giving him greater depth. Freddy was brought back to his scary origins with Craven's return with New Nightmare. In this film, a demonic figure takes on the form of Freddy in the "real world" slowly taking over the films' actors, including Englund playing both the demon Freddy and himself.

Englund's last turn as the character, besides appearing the in 2011 video game Mortal Kombat, was the crossover series Freddy vs. Jason. That film saw legendary horror figures Krueger and Jason Voorhees, from the Friday the 13th franchise, coming to a battle. Though Krueger lost the final battle, he did get one last wink, literally, to the audience showing he is not truly down for the count. That film ended up being the final for both franchises as both would be rebooted. The reboot currently remains the only entry in the franchise to not include Englund.

Talking to Entertainment Weekly, Englund said his reasons for no longer reprising the iconic role is simple. "I'm too old to do another Freddy now. If I do a fight scene now it's got to be real minimal because I can't snap my head for eight different takes and different angles. My spine gets sore." The actor turned seventy this last June. "I can still be mean and scary, but I'm mostly relegated now to sort of Van Helsing roles, old doctors and shit. So it's fun that the last moment of me ever playing Freddy is a wink to the audience."

"It's like, I had a good run. I had a good time. And no one plans for this in your career. When I was wearing tights and doing Shakespeare, I didn't say I wanted to be famous for playing this boogeyman. Careers happen and one of the pieces of advice I give to people is I'm sure you'll do a great pilot or you'll do a little independent art movie and it won't go anywhere and then you might do your Intern Number Three on Grey's Anatomy and that's the one that becomes the huge hit. People just don't know. And when you’ve survived as long as I have and you see that, you can be real happy that you got twenty years as Freddy Kruger, you know?"