Nosferatu’s Bill Skarsgård ‘Never Wants To Play Something This Evil Again’

Bill Skarsgård has built himself quite the reputation as being a master of the macabre. He got his clown on as the petrifying Pennywise in the It movies; doused himself in black and blood for this year’s remake of The Crow; played a ruthless assassin in the videogame-esque Boy Kills World; was the sharp-suited villain of John Wick: Chapter 4; and even popped up in twisty horror-thriller Barbarian (though, to be fair, he did end up just being a pretty nice guy in that one). But his latest role tops them all, as he embodies one of cinema’s darkest shadow-dwellers of all time – Count Orlok, in Robert Eggers’ reimagining of Nosferatu.

But could the Gothic vampire movie see Skarsgård hanging up his horror boots for good? “When we were done with it, I was like, ‘I never want to play something this evil again. I never want to put on prosthetics again’,” he tells Empire, in our world-exclusive recent Captain America: Brave New World issue. Shooting being over, “was a relief,” he says. “It really affected me. Orlok is an occult sorcerer, and it did a number on me in terms of just trying to inhabit that space.”

Skarsgård fully committed to the Count, disappearing inside layers of prosthetics, and even working with an opera singer to lower his voice a whole octave, to make the iconic vampire as menacing and otherworldly as possible. “The voice was the thing I worked the hardest at,” he says. “For a month-and-a-half leading up to the shoot, I didn’t do much else than just record myself. And on set, I would keep doing these exercises. It sounds kind of like Mongolian throat-singing. It’s [insane].” Perhaps, if he’s done with horror, throat-singing could be Skarsgård’s next venture? We’ll keep you posted.

Read our full interview with Bill Skarsgård on Nosferatu in Empire’s world-exclusive Captain America: Brave New World issue, on sale Thursday 19 December. Pre-order a copy online here.