portraits

Pencils on paper 33×24 cm

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. Englund was born in Glendale, California on June 6, 1947, the son of Janis and John Kent Englund, an aeronautics engineer who helped develop the Lockheed U-2 airplane. 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 StateUniversity, Northridge. Wanting a feature film debut, Englund was briefly considered for the part of Han Solo in the 1977 film Star Wars while visiting his close friend, Mark Hamill, who would later be cast in the film as Luke Skywalker, for which role Englund actually auditioned. Since then, Englund has made over 100 appearances on film and television. His early film roles usually typed him as a nerd or a redneck, and he first gained attention in the role of Visitor technician and resistance fighter Willie in the 1983 miniseries V, as well as the 1984 sequel V: The Final Battle, and V: The Series, in which he was a regular cast member. But after such typecasting, Englund went against type when he accepted the role of Freddy Krueger, the psychotic burn victim and child murderer in Wes Craven’s 1984 hugely successful A Nightmare on Elm Street. This role catapulted him to nationally syndicated fame, and Englund became the first new horror movie star since Sir Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in the 1960s. Englund is one of only two actors to act out a horror character eight consecutive times, the other being Doug Bradley, who portrayed the Pinhead character eight times in the Hellraiser film series.  Thanks to this role, Robert is part of the history of horror cinema.

Pencils on paper 33×24 cm

Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction, and fantasy. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and many of them have been adapted into feature films, television movies and comic books. King has published fifty novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, and five non-fiction books. He has written nearly two hundred short stories, most of which have been collected in nine collections of short fiction. Many of his stories are set in his home state of Maine. King attended Durham Elementary School and graduated from Lisbon Falls High School, in Lisbon Falls, Maine. He displayed an early interest in horror as an avid reader of EC’s horror comics, including Tales from the Crypt (he later paid tribute to the comics in his screenplay for Creepshow). He began writing for fun while still in school, contributing articles to Dave’s Rag, the newspaper his brother published with a mimeograph machine, and later began selling to his friends stories based on movies he had seen. From 1966, King studied English at the University of Maine, graduating in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. After leaving the university, King earned a certificate to teach high school but, unable to find a teaching post immediately, initially supplemented his laboring wage by selling short stories to men’s magazines such as Cavalier. Many of these early stories have been republished in the collection Night Shift. In 1973, King’s first novel Carrie was accepted by publishing house Doubleday. King had thrown an early draft of the novel into the trash after becoming discouraged with his progress writing about a teenage girl with psychic powers. His wife retrieved the manuscript and encouraged him to finish it. The rest is history. Stephen King is the master of contemporary horror literature. My favorite for accuracy. I grew up reading his novels and hope one day to meet him in person and tell him how much I am grateful.

Pencils on paper 33×24 cm

Cillian Murphy (born 25 May 1976) is an Irish actor of stage and screen. Since making his debut in his home country in the late 1990s, Murphy has also become a presence in British and American cinema, noted by critics for his performances in a wide range of roles. Murphy began his performing career as a rock musician. After turning down a record deal, he made his professional acting debut in the play Disco Pigs in 1996. While continuing with stage work he also began appearing in independent films, first coming to international attention in 2002 as the hero of Danny Boyle’s post-apocalyptic film 28 Days Later. Murphy’s profile continued to grow in 2005 when he appeared in a series of successful films: firstly as the Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan’s 2005 blockbuster Batman Begins – a role he pencils drawing, reprised in The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises. Murphy often works in or near the city and has expressed no desire to move to Hollywood. He prefers not to speak about his personal life, and did not appear on any live TV chat shows. He does not have a stylist or a personal publicist, travels without an entourage, and often attends premieres alone. Shy and private, Murphy professes a lack of interest in the celebrity scene, finding the red carpet experience a challenge and not one he wants to overcome. It was very interesting to draw his eyes.

Pencils on paper 33×24 cm

Anthony Perkins (April 4, 1932 – September 12, 1992) was an American actor and singer. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his second film, Friendly Persuasion, but is best known for playing Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho and its three sequels. The film was a critical and commercial success, and gained Perkins international fame for his performance as the homicidal owner of the Bates Motel. Perkins’ performance gained him the Best Actor Award from the International Board of Motion Picture Reviewers. Perkins reprised the role of Norman Bates in three sequels to Psycho. The first, Psycho II (1983), was a box office success more than 20 years after the original film. He then starred in and directed Psycho III (for which he was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Actor) in 1986, but refused to reprise his role as Bates in the failed television pilot Bates Motel, famously boycotting the project in a very ardent, and well-received, oppositional public campaign. He did play Bates in the following made-for-cable film Psycho IV: The Beginning in 1990, over which he had much creative control, although he was turned down for director. Perkins has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, an honor he received for his influential and exceptional contributions to the motion picture industry. It is located at 6801 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California. Perkins died at his Hollywood Hills home on September 12, 1992, from AIDS-related pneumonia. Maybe Norman Bates is the father of all homicidal maniacs of the big screen.

Pencils on paper 33×24 cm

Uma Karuna Thurman (born April 29, 1970) is an American actress and model. She has performed in leading roles in a variety of films, ranging from romantic comedies and dramas to science fiction and action movies. Thurman was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Her forename Uma, Sanskrit उमा, meaning “splendour, light”, is a name of Parvati, the Hindu goddess of love and fertility. Her father, Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman, is a professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies; an academic and writer. Her mother, Nena von Schlebrügge, was a noblewoman of Baroness virtue and a high-fashion model, discovered in Stockholm, who moved to New York at the age of 17 to join the Ford Modelling Agency. Thurman began her career as a fashion model at age 15, but she made her movie debut in 1988, appearing in four films. In 1994 Thurman auditioned for the Quentin Tarantino movie Pulp Fiction and was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar the following year. She became one of Tarantino’s favorite actresses to cast. In 2003 she played assassin Beatrix Kiddo in the Kill Bill movie, out for revenge against her former lover. Tarantino wrote the part specifically for her. He cited Thurman as his muse while writing the film, and gave her joint credit for the character, whom the two conceived on the set of Pulp Fiction from the sole image of a bride covered in blood. The film took nine months to shoot, and was filmed in five different countries. The role was also her most demanding, and she spent three months training in martial arts, swordsmanship, and Japanese. It was originally set to be released as one film. However, due to its over 4-hour running time, it was ultimately released in two parts and subsequently became a cult film  and scored highly with critics. Thurman was nominated for a Golden Globe for both entries, plus three MTV Movie Awards for Best Female Performance and two for Best Fight. I always liked warrior women.