Freddy Krueger, for those of you under the age of 15 was a movie bad guy who’d sneak into your dreams and slit your throat while you slept. Freddy has starred in more movies than Emma Stone’s top lip, however, despite this, he’s still been condemned to a life of relative obscurity, Luke Skywalker on the other hand is a name so ingrained in pop culture saying it in a mirror 5 times kills your acting career. So it may surprise you to realise that Luke Skywalker as we know him today only exists because of Freddy Krueger.
Okay so we may have stretched the truth a little here, it wasn’t Freddy Krueger, but the man famous for playing him, Robert Englund that is responsible for Luke Skywalker. Robert and Mark Hamill (yes, that Mark Hamill) are good friends, and back in the day, Hamill was a struggling actor sleeping on Englund’s couch.
One day Englund happened to mention to Hamill that there was a casting call for a sci fi movie, this movie just so happened to be Star Wars, the film that both launched and destroyed Hamill’s career. The effect of this career destroying shock wave seemingly affected Englund too, which is the only reason we can think of for why a guy who made a a child molester in a Christmas sweater terrifying wasn’t hailed as the greatest actor of all time.
