Englund and Tuesday Knight in A Nightmare On Elm Street 4. (Photo: Moviepix/Getty Images)

Robert Englund knows how much Freddy Krueger means to fans. He signs autographs, takes pictures, dutifully answers question after question about his makeup and costumes, and just generally greets Freddy obsessives at hotel bars and in convention halls year after year after year. Still, time takes its toll, even on the human vessel through which an immortal child-molesting serial killer manifests on the screen. In other words: Don’t expect Englund to don Freddy’s famous sweater and fedora again.




Englund reminds fans that he’s too old for this shit in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly about 2003's Freddy Vs. Jason, which Englund says was—and will continue to be—the last time he played the role. “I’m too old to do another Freddy now,” he says. “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. 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.”

For the record, Englund has a few ideas about who would make a good replacement; namely, he’d like to see 59-year-old Kevin Bacon take over the role, because Bacon “respects horror movies” and “doesn’t make fun of them.” Englund also has no problem continuing to do some Van Helsing-type shit, and has a new movie along those general lines, Nightworld, coming out in theaters and on VOD tomorrow.


We’ve also got an 11 Questions with Englund running here on The A.V. Club this coming Tuesday—did you know he’s a big fan of house boats?—so stay tuned for that.

[Editor’s Note: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified Tuesday Knight as Tuesday Weld in the above photo. The A.V. Club regrets the error.]