Nick Castle Recalls His First Experience Playing Michael In Halloween

Earlier this month, Halloween star Nick Castle admitted that the main reason he got involved in the classic 1978 slasher flick was to learn a little about directing from the great John Carpenter. There are certainly worse ways to pick up on a few filmmaking tips than featuring in one of the most celebrated horror movies of the 1970s, and better yet, from the sound of things, Castle’s acting job wasn’t too taxing, either.

Seeing how the murderous Michael Myers has no lines and no visible face, Castle’s performance was all in the body, but according to the actor and eventual filmmaker, Carpenter gave him no real direction on how best to convey his character.

“In fact, the first scene I did I totally remember it. John said, ‘Go across the street, walk across the street,'” Castle shared with ComicBook.com. “Okay, so I’m halfway going across the street and I turn back and I go, ‘John, this is the first shot that I’m in. What do you want me to do?’ Kind of like, ‘What’s my motivation?’ He said, ‘Just go over there and walk.’ Whether it was instinctual, whether he saw something in the way I walked, he never told me anything. He just said, ‘Walk.’ Then everything else is literally like a puppeteer. Like, ‘Lean this way. Walk this way. Come in now. Tilt your head.’ Those were things that he brought to the mystery of that character.”

Castle returned to the franchise for the first time in forty years with David Gordon Green’s new Halloween, in which the actor split the role of the masked killer with James Jude Courtney. While Castle has said that working with Green was “the same thing” as acting under Carpenter’s puppeteering, he’s also suggested that the character he once helped make famous is currently in good hands.

“In the new one, I have just a cameo. James Courtney does all the work, and he does a wonderful job,” Castle noted. “He’s a tougher Michael, having grown up I guess in these 40 years. Literally grown up, because he’s about 6’3″, and I was 5’11 1/2″ back then. But the experience was a blast. We had fun. David is a very … not only very talented, but a cool guy.”

Though it’s unlikely that any installment in this long-running franchise will ever top the reputation of the film that started it all, early reception to Green’s version has been generally encouraging. And you can decide for yourself how well this latest sequel stacks up against Michael’s big screen debut when the new Halloween hits cinemas on October 19th.