Bill Skarsgard worked to make his voice “as deep as possible” so Count Orlok would “feel otherworldly" in ‘Nosferatu’.
The 34-year-old actor plays the Transylvanian vampire in the upcoming horror flick - which is a reimagining of the 1922 silent film ‘Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror’ - and has now said he did everything he could to “unsettle” the audience as Count Orlok.
In the latest edition of SFX magazine, the ‘John Wick: Chapter 4’ star said: “I didn't want it to feel contrived. I wanted it to feel otherworldly and f***** up and unsettling.”
Skarsgard added director Robert Eggers - who said he was was influenced by “chain-smoking Bulgarian actors” for Orlok’s voice - wanted the character’s verbalisations to be “as deep as possible”.
He continued: “Robert writes beautiful descriptions. As an actor, you feel very fortunate working with such a script, because it's almost like working off a novel.
“You have these descriptions that are so visceral: the pained, laboured breath of Orlok. Even with speaking, there's an element of pain in it – it almost hurts him to speak. All those little things were building blocks for the development of the voice.”
As well as his vocals, Eggers discussed what set Orlok apart from other on-screen vampires, and said his horror character would drink blood from its victim’s heart rather than their neck in an effort to stay true to the folklore surrounding vampires.
‘The Lighthouse’ director explained: “One of the interesting things about doing the research is to try to forget everything you know about vampires.
“You'll notice that [in ‘Nosferatu’] Orlok drinks blood from the heart, not the neck. Now obviously you can't pierce a breastbone, so it doesn't really make sense. It makes much more sense to drink someone's blood from their neck.
“But in folklore, when people are experiencing vampiric attacks it's similar to old hag syndrome [meaning sleep paralysis] where you have pressure on your chest, so people interpreted it as vampires drinking blood from their chest.
“But there are also folk vampires who didn't drink blood, but just fornicated with their widows until their widows died from it. So I think it's all part of the source material.”
‘Nosferatu’ - which also stars Willem Dafoe, Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult and Emma Corrin - tells the terrifying tale of a young woman who finds herself the target of the ancient Transylvanian vampire Count Orlok after the creature becomes infatuated by her.
Previously, Skarsgard admitted he was “terrified just looking at the image” of Count Orlok, and said the vampire’s appearance was was far more frightening than that of his Pennywise the Dancing Clown costume from his two ‘It’ movies.
Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, he said: “I was terrified just looking at the image. It looked so, so different from me, way more so than Pennywise.
“I was worried that I couldn't perform through it, that it would feel like giant prosthetic pieces, and I couldn't come alive through that.”
