Robert Englund is ready to wake up from “A Nightmare on Elm Street.”
The iconic franchise star, who has portrayed Freddy Kreuger across eight films since 1984, revealed that “Freddy vs. Jason” was the last stand for his take on the character.
“I kind of knew after 2004 that I wasn’t up to playing Freddy again,” Englund told Insider while promoting documentary “Hollywood Dreams & Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story,” adding, “I was in my 50s, and ‘Freddy vs. Jason’ took a lot out of me.”
Englund was “still doing a lot of my stunts,” including underwater scenes, but the film proved that he was done with the role due to his age. “I kind of knew I didn’t have a lot of stunt work left in me, or a lot of takes to physicalize it,” Englund said. “And my torso had shifted, along with my face getting older, which doesn’t matter because I’m under all that crap — that makeup. But my torso … your weight shifts, and you get thicker as you get older. And I sort of lost Freddy’s silhouette.”
The “Stranger Things” star continued, “I might have had another Freddy or two in me back in 2005 to 2010, but I don’t any longer. They need to find a new Freddy. It could be somebody unknown or it could be someone established, like Kevin Bacon. … I would be honored if maybe they invited me to do a cameo.”
Englund noted that filmmaker Jordan Peele could even take over the franchise, saying, “There’s extraordinary work being done now. I don’t want to live in a world without Jordan Peele. ‘Get Out’ is absolute genius.”
A potential remake wouldn’t mark the first time Freddy’s striped sweater was worn by someone other than Englund: The 2010 remake of the original “Elm Street” starred Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy. However, Englund recently told Variety that the film changed the franchise for the worse.
“Jackie’s just so good, a wonderful actor, so I don’t think it was that,” Englund said. “I’ve always thought that Freddy is described as a child killer. So when they made Freddy a child molester [in the remake], that’s not what Freddy is, I don’t think. By taking it to such a dark, dark place, there’s no room for the personality of Freddy to be exploited.”
