Bill Skarsgard has made a name for himself playing creepy characters and monsters, but the actor recently revealed that some of them have ingrained themselves so deeply in his mind that they have invaded his dreams. Naturally, the one character that comes to mind is Stephen King’s killer clown, Pennywise, who Skarsgård played in the two-part movie adaptation of It.
Pennywise was originally played on screen by Tim Curry, in a TV miniseries based on the master of horror’s 1986 novel. Taking on the task of following that iconic performance – even after a gap of almost 30 years – was one that was daunting for Skarsgård, and as he put all of himself into the performance of the child-murdering monster, It was settling into his subconscious. He told Vanity Fair about how he used to dream about his evil alter ego:
“Those dreams were so strange. Either I was confronting Pennywise and I was upset with him, yelling at him—or I was Pennywise, but I was walking around in the streets that I grew up on, and I’m like, No, no. I shouldn’t be out here in public walking around like this. This is not how it’s supposed to be done. It was this weird thing where I was trying to separate myself from this thing, literally back in the place that I grew up in, in the same apartment that I grew up in.
Bill Skarsgård Has Carved a Career Playing Dark Characters
There are some actors that find themselves drawn to dark roles, or perhaps the roles are drawn to them. For Skarsgård, his resume is fast filling up with roles that take him on disturbing journeys into darkness, and in the main, he has no issue with that at all.
Along with his incredible take on Pennywise, the actor has had roles in the Stephen King-inspired series Castle Rock, the twisted and subversive Barbarian, this year’s reimagining of The Crow, and this December he will take on the role of Count Orlok in Robert Eggers’ remake of Nosferatu. While Pennywise may have haunted his dreams, the role of Orlok is one that truly terrifies him. He explained to AnOther Magazine:
“I have to say, I’ve never been more terrified of a role and probably won’t be again. The whole journey was so intense. Once you start channeling something that’s not you, you feel like a vessel. And you can go entire movies where that doesn’t happen at all or it happens in moments, but that’s always what you’re striving towards. In that moment, the doors are open and it’s flowing through me. I’ve never prepared this hard for anything before either. But once we started shooting, Orlok was very formed and he started to flow. I could connect and dial up to wherever Orlok was and he would come through. It was an intense ride.”
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Nosferatu does not arrive in cinemas until December 25, but the film is already causing quite a stir, and could be one of the biggest horror movies of the year despite having a lot of competition for that title. Meanwhile, Skarsgård will also be stepping back into the role of Pennywise for the It spin-off series Welcome to Derry, which will debut on Max in 2025.
- Release Date
- September 4, 2019
- Runtime
- 165
- Tagline
- You’ll Float Too