- published: 13 Sep 2015
- views: 7007
Robert Barton Englund (born June 6, 1947) is an American actor, voice-actor, singer, and director, best known for playing the fictional serial killer Freddy Krueger, in the Nightmare on Elm Street film series. He received a Saturn Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors in 1987 and A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master in 1988. Englund is a classically trained actor.
Englund was born in Glendale, California on June 6, 1947, the son of Janis (née MacDonald) and John Kent Englund, an aeronautics engineer who helped develop the Lockheed U-2 aircraft. He is of part Swedish ancestry, and can speak Swedish fairly well. Englund began studying acting at the age of twelve in 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 California State University for three years before transferring to Michigan's Oakland University, where he trained at the Meadow Brook Theatre, at the time a branch of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.