The Actors That Play These Horror Movie Villains Are Gorgeous In Real Life

Even if you're not a fan of the horror genre, chances are you've heard of Freddy Krueger, but would you recognize actor Robert Englund if you passed him in the street? Englund played the iconic villain for the first time in 1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street and went on to reprise the role a whopping seven times, making his final bow as the scarred serial killer in 2003's Freddy vs. Jason. Englund might be a legend in horror circles, but he isn't anywhere near as famous as the Krueger character. It's a problem that the actors behind many horror movie villains have to live with — you give your all to a role, and yet nobody ever sees your face.

Whether the evildoer is some kind of creature/demon/alien, or simply an utterly deplorable human being doing terrible things, the audience is often not supposed to view these characters as people. Elaborate costumes and makeup certainly help us with that, though we still can't help but wonder what's going on underneath all that latex and face paint. What do the actors behind these horrific characters actually look like?

Englund isn't a bad looking guy (He's certainly a lot easier on the eye than old Freddy), but there's a handful of horror movie actors that really don't look like they should be playing the villain. See for yourself.

Hiring an actor who moonlights as a model only to cover him in makeup might seem pointless, but Bill Skarsgård wasn't cast as Pennywise the Dancing Clown in the 2017 adaptation of Stephen King's IT because of his good looks. The Swedish actor brought a whole new level of intensity to the character, setting his Pennywise apart from the earlier Tim Curry TV version. Getting into the right mindset for the role was difficult for Skarsgård, and he found it even harder to shake it off after the film wrapped.

"I was home, done with the movie, and I started having very strange and vivid Pennywise dreams," Skarsgård told Entertainment Weekly. "Every night, he came and visited. It was in the shape of either me dealing with him, sort of Pennywise as a separate entity of me, and then also me as Pennywise in circumstances that I didn't appreciate." 

It wasn't just Skarsgård himself who got spooked — some of the child actors he worked with were "traumatized" too. "Some of them were really intrigued, but some couldn't look at me, and some were shaking — this one kid started crying," he told Interview. The actor admitted that the moment director Andy Muschietti yelled "Action," he went straight into character, tears or no tears. "So some of these kids got terrified and started to cry in the middle of the take, and then I realized, 'Holy s***, what am I doing? What is this? This is horrible.'"

2004's The Grudge turned out to be little more than another unambitious Hollywood rehash of a J-horror favorite, though in theory it should have been at least as good as the Japanese version. Takashi Shimizu (director of the original Ju-on) agreed to helm the Americanized remake, and he was joined by Takako Fuji, the woman behind creepy-as-hell ghost Kayako. 

Speaking to IGN, Fuji admitted that the difference in budgets was stark. "The Hollywood remake obviously is a bigger production," she said. "We were able to build the sets and everything, where we can do more stuff. So contrary to Japanese production, we have to use existing houses and we are not allowed to use different equipment and stuff, so we have to use whatever is available to us." Alas, the reboot proved far less popular with critics than the bare-bones original.

Fuji reprised the role of Kayako in 2006's The Grudge 2 (the sixth time she'd played the vengeful ghost), and while this installment was flat-out panned, the character still left a mark on the horror genre Stateside. "I feel that some of the reasons are because typical American ghosts are zombies and demons and stuff like that, but when it comes to the Japanese ghosts it's more like a grudge," Fuji explained. "People's feelings are into it. I think that's something new to America. I think that's maybe what makes it scary."

He had zero lines, but Paul T. Taylor was still thrilled to make his big screen debut in Robert Rodriguez's neo-noir classic Sin City in 2005. More bit parts followed, but Taylor was forced to put his career — and life — on hold after he was diagnosed with Hepatitis C. The disease became hard to deal with and Taylor succumbed to depression.

"I had stopped enjoying the business," he told Bloody Disgusting. "I had started just being a hermit, staying home. Just eating pizza while watching movies, and that was my life." Suicidal thoughts began to cross his mind, but before he had the chance to do anything drastic, a new drug for the treatment of Hepatitis C helped Taylor recover. He started auditioning again, and one day he received a script simply titled Judgement. Being a Hellraiser fan, Taylor saw through the ruse. 

"They were keeping it a secret then that it was a Hellraiser movie," the actor said. "They were just calling it Judgement. The first line I read, I said, 'This is a Hellraiser movie.' I knew it, because I'm already well versed in the language of Hellraiser. I'm a huge fan." Taylor was offered the role of Pinhead after the legendary Doug Bradley refused to reprise the role.

Speaking of sequels coming out of the blue, Jeepers Creepers 3 arrived in 2017, set between the first movie (2001) and the second one (2003). The original Jeepers Creepers divided critical opinion upon release but quickly gained a cult following, with the eponymous Creeper catching the imagination of horror fans. According to the man underneath the makeup, the entire transformation takes between three and five hours.

"By the time they're done, I am somebody else ... so it's a lot easier for me to just get into the character," Jonathan Breck said. The only part of himself that Breck can see when he looks in the mirror are his eyes, but he's far from uncomfortable in the Creeper get-up. "The suit is cast exactly like my body so it feels like a second skin. When I look in the mirror and I'm bulked up three times the size I normally am, you just feel like there's nothing you can't do. It's like a magic cape that you put on, and instantly you become the Creeper."

Speaking with IGN about the third (but not final) movie in the series, Breck revealed that he did a lot of his own stunt work on Jeepers Creepers 3 to save money. "I really had to lace up my bootstraps and do a lot of these myself."