Who Played Freddy Krueger? More Actors Wore The Glove Than You Likely Realize

Most viewers, of course, associate actor Robert Englund with Freddy Krueger. The veteran actor originated the role of the severely scarred serial killer who terrorizes his victims in their dreams in 1984's "A Nightmare on Elm Street." And yes, while Englund clearly defined the horror movie icon under the auspices of writer-director Wes Craven since the first "Nightmare" nearly 40 years ago, six other actors, surprisingly, have also embodied Freddy.

Englund has starred in eight films as Freddy since the 1984 original, which spans seven "A Nightmare on Elm Street" films — if you  include 1994's clever meta movie "New Nightmare" — as well as a spinoff film that pitted the steely-clawed glove-wearing slasher vs. the hatchet-wielding, hockey-masked killer in "Freddy vs. Jason" in 1993. Naturally, by expanding the movie maniac's tale over the course of seven "Nightmare" films, the chapters were able to delve into Krueger's backstory and examined different iterations of the character through various actors.

Two versions of the character played by actors other than Englund came in 1989's "A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child," when Freddy invaded the dreams of a pregnant woman's unborn baby. In the film's third act, "Merging Freddy" — played by Noble Craig — bursts out of the mother. Also in "The Dream Child," Michael Bailey Smith plays a bulked-up superhero version of the villain and is billed as "Super Freddy" in his comic book-infused sequence. In 1991, two more actors shared the character with Englund for "Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare," as Chason Schirmer played "Young Freddy" while Tobe Sexton assumed the role of "Teen Freddy."

In 2010, New Line Cinema decided to reboot the "Nightmare" film series with the aptly titled "A Nightmare on Elm Street," but this time around the film starred Oscar-nominated actor Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy Krueger. With a solid return at the worldwide box office of $117.7 million in ticket sales against a $35 million production budget, the Robert Englund-less "Nightmare" arguably had enough gas in the tank to fire up a new franchise based on the reboot, but nothing ever materialized.

While Englund and Haley had the most high-profile turns as Freddy in the "Nightmare on Elm Street" films, the classic character has lived on in a handful of independent film shorts. Set up as prequel chapters, the new "Nightmare" shorts starred Roberto Lombardi as Freddy in "Krueger: A Tale from Elm Street" in 2011, and he reprised the role again that year with "The Nightmare Ends on Halloween II" and 2013's "Krueger: Another Tale from Elm Street."

In 2014, Lombardi played the character in two more film shorts — "Krueger: A Walk Through Elm Street" and "Krueger: The Slasher from Elm Street" — and finished his run as the character with 2016's "Krueger: The Legend of Elm Street," 2017's "Krueger: Tales from Elm Street," and 2019's "New Tale: The Demon of Elm Street."