Freddy Krueger actor Robert Englund recalls scaring waiter while in costume: 'I think that guy's still running'

"The poor guy dropped his whole tray of food," recalled the "Nightmare on Elm Street" star.

Freddy Krueger doesn’t need the big screen to give people nightmares.

Ahead of A Nightmare on Elm Street’s 40th anniversary, Robert Englund — who spent eight films and a TV series terrorizing sleeping teens as the clawed maniac — is opening up about one of his very first scares. While chatting with PEOPLE, Englund shared that the memorable interaction occurred when he and costars Johnny Depp and Nick Corri became "sick of the catering" on set, and decided to leave the studio for lunch at a local restaurant.

"We just couldn't do it anymore. No more peanut butter and jelly, and macaroni and cheese," he said, sharing that they crossed the street and walked into a Thai food restaurant instead. But, having grown used to it themselves, they failed to account for how frightening Englund appeared while fully decked out in his Freddy Krueger costume and makeup.

Steve Slocomb/Getty  Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger

Steve Slocomb/Getty

Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger

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"We went into this darkened Thai restaurant and we were sitting there, we were in the back towards the kitchen and a guy came from the back kitchen area," Englund recounted. "I remember it had a porthole window in the door and I had taken off the hat and the door opened and that fluorescent lighting from the kitchen spilled out and illuminated me.”

Englund, who was merely playing with his chopsticks, looked up at the man exiting the kitchen, and gave him quite the shock. “The poor guy dropped his whole tray of food for this other group of people that were there waiting to be served,” the actor said. “And he ran back into the kitchen."

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Laughing about it now, Englund added, "What he must have seen — you know, Freddy Krueger, 12 or 14 feet away sitting at a booth, no hat on, that bit of fluorescent lighting just sort of slashing across him. I think that guy's still running."

Englund was the first to bring Freddy Krueger to life, embodying the dream-faring serial killer in eight films before retiring from the role after 2003's Freddy vs. Jason. Since then, the actor, now 77, has made it clear that he has no plans to reprise his signature role

"I won't don the fedora or strap on the claws again," Englund told Entertainment Weekly last year. "I'm just a little too old."

Jun Sato/WireImage Robert Englund

Jun Sato/WireImage

Robert Englund

Related: A Nightmare on Elm Street star Heather Langenkamp would 'love' to reprise role of Nancy Thompson in another Freddy movie

That said, the Nightmare on Elm Street star spoke fondly of his tenure in the horror franchise, and the satisfaction of landing what would soon become an iconic role. Though he didn’t yet have his Krueger claws, brown fedora, and scarred facial makeup, the actor put plenty of thought into how he would appear during his audition, in the hopes of proving that he could be very different than the "tanned, blonde, curly" appearance he had presented on screen for the previous decade.

"I had greased my hair down with some oil from under the hood of my car, and I'd taken a little bit of cigarette ash and dabbled it under my eyes," he told EW. He added that once he was in the room with writer-director Wes Craven, hearing about the filmmaker’s vision for the film, he took care to remain silent.

“I played a staring game with him," he explained. "Wes telling me this vision of his, this haunting landscape of the nightmare, and [I was] trying not to blink my eyes so that they looked kind of strange. I think those were all the things that went into me getting that phone call on my answering machine: 'You got the part.'"

In honor of its 40th anniversary, Warner Bros. has released A Nightmare on Elm Street on 4K UHD, available for both digital and physical purchase.