Glen Lantz, A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984)

Were Johnny Depp to appear in a Nightmare On Elm Street movie today, he’d almost certainly be starring as Freddy Krueger himself. (It wouldn’t be the first time the actor played a slasher or a guy with razors for fingers.) Back in 1984, however, Depp was just a handsome high-school drop out, best suited to normal heartthrob roles. His first screen gig was as the neighbor and squeeze of Nightmare heroine Nancy (Heather Langenkamp), a part that required no elaborate makeup, outlandish costumes, or quirky affectations. His Glen is just an ordinary teenage boy, with an affinity for climbing through his girlfriend’s bedroom window, talking for hours on his corded telephone, and watching Miss Nude America on mute while listening to his records. Plenty of current A-listers did their time in the Hollywood horror trenches, dutifully serving as machete and chainsaw fodder. Depp may be the only one of them, however, who seems to have spent the remainder of his career trying to out-weird the homicidal maniac who first butchered him on-screen. [A.A. Dowd]