Biography of Robert Englund (a.k.a.: Freddy Krueger)

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 the 1974 drama film Buster and Billie. After supporting roles in films like Stay Hungry (1976), A Star Is Born (1976), and Big Wednesday (1977), he had his breakthrough as resistance fighter Willie in the 1983 miniseries V and its subsequent sequel series. After his performance in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), he became closely associated with the horror film genre, and is widely-regarded as one of its iconic actors.

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 he was in high school, he attended the Cranbrook Theatre School (organized by the Cranbrook Educational Community) in Bloomfield Hills. 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, whom he divorced in 1972. 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.