10 Horror Movies Actors Wanted You To Hate

Having broken free of the Skarsgård family shadow with a few big-ticket films under his belt, Bill Skarsgård has since spent the past half-decade carving a bit of a niche in the world of horror, turning in striking performances in Villains (2019), Barbarian (2022) and, of course, Andy Muschietti's It films (2017, 2019) as Pennywise the dancing clown.

Rolling into Derry to scare the living bejesus out of a group of kids and eat the flesh from their bones, Pennywise manifests as everyone's greatest fears, taking on all shapes and forms in the process. Though aided by prosthetics, makeup and good ol' computer magic, it is Skarsgård himself who delivers most of the goods on camera, having sought to make the character truly vile, embodying all the things he personally was afraid of in hopes of doing some serious damage to audiences.

Skarsgård is nothing if not a tough cookie, but with such a mission statement he found that he may have gone too far. Such a grotesque and physically-involved performance was always going to take a toll, but the actor found the role scared him as much as anyone else, invading his life like an abusive relationship and spilling over into his dreams.