‘Sometimes I’d get yelled at for choices that I made and then they’d end up in the cut’: Patricia Arquette on ‘Nightmare on Elm Street 3’

Back in 1987, the third sequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street, called Dream Warriors, graced us with its presence. It starred a young Patricia Arquette as Kristen Parker, a young woman sent to a psychiatric ward after a Freddy Krueger dream injury is misinterpreted as a suicide attempt. Recently, Arquette provided some insight into what that filming process was like.

Arquette spoke with Vanity Fair in a wide-ranging interview that covered a lot of her career, but the horror film holds a special place in her heart. “I remember auditioning for Nightmare on Elm Street part 3, which entailed a lot of screaming. I was pretty young and excited about that series. I’ve always loved horror.”

Arquette also revealed that New Line Cinema also considered recasting her after one day. Here’s what director Chuck Russell said about that.

“She had a little bit of cold feet on her first day. The producers were very concerned about her. I don’t even know if Patricia knows this, but they were talking about possibly recasting that part. And I said, ‘No, this girl has such a beautiful, haunted quality about her that made her believable in that role.’ She’s an amazing actress, a totally truthful actress.”

Arquette said she was grateful that Russell “stepped in to intervene.” While she was on the set there were times when “they would get upset” with her acting methods. “Like I’d try a door handle in a dream and then I’d turn and I’d try it again, but that was just my instinct. And they ended up using it in the movie. They didn’t use the other takes where I tried it once.”

Her instincts would get her in trouble, she said, and “sometimes I would get yelled at for choices that I’d make, but then they’d end up in the cut.”

Regardless of the difficulty, she learned a whole lot from the experience. For example: “You have to be aware of your body and listen to your body.” She recalled having to be around smoke on set all the time and then having “these terrible, terrible pains in my ovaries.”

A doctor’s visit revealed that she had cysts, which dissolved and went “away on their own.” When they went to do reshoots and she was back in the smoke, she got “that same attack.” That’s when she realized that smoke is “really not healthy for you.”

While she was recast for the next sequel, Arquette has done just fine for herself in her acting career. She recently appeared on the Apple TV Plus show Severance and will return for its second season, and she stars in the new series High Desert, in a rare comic turn, on Max.