How Bill Skarsgård Enters Monstrous New Acting Territory with 'Nosferatu'

Actors often embrace this mold when they get a reputation for playing monsters in horror movies. Look at the various monsters played by Lon Chaney, Christopher Lee, or Boris Karloff over the years. In a more modern context, Tony Todd, forever iconic for his work as the titular supernatural entity of the Candyman movies, also played his fair share of further intimidating horror movie figures. In the last decade, Bill Skarsgård has cultivated a reputation for his horror movie monster performances after inhabiting Pennywise in the two It movies.

Once he left Derry, Maine, he provided voice work for the chief Deviant villain Kro in Eternals, subverted audience expectations by getting slaughtered by Barbarian’s actual antagonist, and will now dominate movie theaters this Christmas taking on the devious vampire Count Orlok in Nosferatu. A creation actors like Max Schreck and Klaus Kinski previously inhabited, Skarsgård is grappling with a gigantic cultural legacy in Nosferatu beyond just his own prior monstrous performances. Impressively, his Count Orlok is a mighty imposing entity that doesn’t at all evoke Pennywise. On the contrary, this performance demonstrates Skarsgård stepping into exciting new acting territory while expanding his monstrous artistic reputation.

For the big screen incarnation of Pennywise, Skarsgård’s performance leaned towards the pronounced. After all, he was playing a cosmic entity taking on the form of an old-timey clown. With brightly colored makeup all along his face, it was no wonder Skarsgård’s physicality was all about emphasizing strange dance moves, lanky fingers, or contorting his body. Meanwhile, across both It movies, Skarsgård imbued Pennywise with a malleable on-screen aura. This creature could take on whatever personality best suits his prey. He could exude vulnerability, playful menace, or just straight-up overwhelming evil at the drop of a hat. Skarsgård’s Pennywise was defined by an erratic nature that the actor dived into head-first.

For Count Orlok, Skarsgård and director Robert Eggers concoct a vampire vision firmly going in the opposite direction. Orlok is a static being. He’s an aloof, withdrawn man who acts the same around every person he meets. His speaking style doesn’t vary whether he’s talking to a woman he’s enamored with or his ceaselessly loyal servant. It’s as if Orlok has existed for so long that depraved evil has caked in around him. Varied personality traits couldn’t emerge from his physical form if he tried. Orlok just constantly exudes death and unnerving misery. It’s worlds away from Skarsgård’s Pennywise, with only bloodthirsty urges uniting the two characters.

Skarsgård’s approach to Orlok is immediately vividly established in his first scene with Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) in this vampire’s Transylvanian domicile. As Hutter navigates the premises, Skarsgård plays Orlok as an eerie paradox. Orlok sounds like he’s just seconds away from death whenever he speaks. His raspy voice emerges from a throat dryer than the Sahara. Meanwhile, his limited physicality suggests a man who could’ve been around since the days of Vlad the Impaler. Yet there’s still something so … ominous about Orlok. Even with Skarsgård conveying such tangible decay in this blood-sucker, Hutter barely-concealed terror over Orlok is incredibly understandable.
After all, Orlok has a nasty habit of just appearing across a room in the blink of an eye or being immovable in demands like forcing Hutter to stay the night. He’s also a tall being looming over others like a vulture, skulking out any traces of vulnerability in his human prey. Orlok may look seconds away from death … but he’s still palpably capable of vicious chaos. That’s a compelling contradiction that Skarsgård brings to the screen without even a trace of irony or self-deprecation.

That performer also effortlessly communicates Orlok’s arcaneness despite Bill Skarsgård himself being only 34 years old. In every inch of his Nosferatu screentime, though, Skarsgård uses his gift for physical acting to muster up body language that screams creaking bones and eons of wear and tear. Most importantly, Skarsgård’s ancient aura for Orlok is compounded through inescapable hollowness. Gary Oldman’s Dracula in Bram Stoker’s Dracula could transform into a handsome conventional-looking man to win over a woman that’s caught his fancy.

Skarsgård’s Orlok, meanwhile, has no interest in even putting on a façade of liveliness. Instead, Orlok’s first big on-screen interaction with Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) sees this vampire manifesting in his decaying default form (complete with that mustache carried over from Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel). He bellows to her that she is his property now and that she will obey his whims…lest horrific things befall her loved ones. After Ellen challenges his desires, Orlok openly admits to the young lady that he cannot feel love. Even so, he still craves possessing her romantically. Orlok is driven by a compulsion tied to ownership, not emotions.

After all, how could feelings bounce around in a being that Skarsgård vividly paints as being devoid of any interiority? Skarsgård’s physicality for this monster instantly paints a portrait of an impulsive creation driven by scents or blood-lust, not long-term scheming or nuanced emotions. The actor’s blunt gestures, gait, and piercing line deliveries all communicate how little exists within Orlok. He’s been around so long that all he craves is tormenting and feasting on the mortals around him. There is no handsome prince just waiting to be unlocked within this vampire. Skarsgård’s mastery of physical acting cements to viewers just how vacant Orlok’s soul is.

This performer also infuses Orlok with delightfully unique flourishes like the vampire’s style of speaking. Orlok’s accent is a tapestry of vocal influences. There are traces of Romanian in there, but it’s mostly defined by a craggly, booming quality. His grand proclamations and very definitive speaking style sometimes evoke a preacher or wrestling announcer who hasn’t drank a cup of water in eons. As a cherry on top, Orlok often sounds like a dead-ringer for Trevor Slattery’s TV voice for The Mandarin in Iron Man 3 (“ready … for … another lesson?”).
Notice what Skarsgård’s Orlok voice doesn’t immediately conjure up memories of. Past versions of Orlok and Dracula don’t spring to mind when this vampire begins monologuing in Nosferatu. Nor do memories of Skarsgård’s other movie monsters like Pennywise or Kro distract from processing the actor’s vision of this ancient beast. Once again, Bill Skarsgård goes for a definitive, bold choice that pays off in dividends. Even with other monstrous creations under his belt, Count Orlok in Nosferatu registers as something fresh and new even in how he speaks.

Best of all, Skarsgård, like in It, proves skilled in commanding a distinctive aura but not also overwhelming the other members of his surrounding ensemble cast. This is not a Johnny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels situation where audiences get too much of a good thing. Instead, Skarsgård’s tremendously evocative on-screen Nosferatu work leaves plenty of room for actors like Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, and Willem Dafoe to leave outsized impressions. Certainly, whenever this actor’s on-screen, he grabs your attention, but he doesn’t suffocate the rest of the feature.

Not every actor could pull off that kind of delicate balancing act. Then again, not many actors could repeatedly inhabit movie monsters without feeling like they’re stifling their craft. With Nosferatu, though, Bill Skarsgård reaffirms his talents as a performer while showing how endlessly varied the world of movie monster performances can be. Naturally, he does so while ensuring you’ll have nightmares for eons to come. Sorry SpongeBob SquarePants, Bill Skarsgård has delivered the definitive 21st century take on Nosferatu.

Lisa Laman is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic and freelance writer living both on the autism spectrum and in Texas.