Robert Englund

Robert Barton Englund (born June 6, 1947) is an American actor and director, best known for playing the supernatural serial killer Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street film series. Classically trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Englund began his career as a stage actor in regional theatre, and made his film debut in Buster and Billie in 1974. After supporting roles in films in the 1970s such as Stay Hungry, A Star Is Born, and Big Wednesday, Englund had his breakthrough as the resistance fighter Willie in the miniseries V in 1983. Following his performance in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984, he became closely associated with the horror film genre, and is widely-regarded as one of its iconic actors. Early life Englund was born on June 6, 1947, in Glendale, California, the son of Janis (née MacDonald) and John Kent Englund, an aeronautics engineer who helped develop the Lockheed U-2 airplane. He is of part Swedish ancestry and part Scottish ancestry. Englund began studying acting at the age of twelve, accompanying a friend to a children's theater program at California State University, Northridge. While in high school, he attended Cranbrook Theatre School (organized by the Cranbrook Educational Community) in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He then attended UCLA for three years, before dropping out and transferring to Michigan's Oakland University, where he trained at the Meadow Brook Theater, at the time a branch of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Englund had five successful years performing in regional theater including plays by Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw. He married for the first time in 1968 to a nurse Elizabeth Gardner. Shortly afterward, he returned to the West Coast in search of film work, and landed a supporting role in the film Buster and Billie, directed by Daniel Petrie.