Despite being Oscar nominated and enjoyed a career that has already spanned over thirty years it's the role of Freddy Krueger that will make Jackie Earle Haley a household name.
Haley launched his acting career as a child lending his voice to TY series Wait Till Your Father Gets Home before going onto Valley of the Dinosaurs.
He made his name in comedy The Bad News Bears in 1976 which was directed by Michael Ritchie.
Hopeless Little League team that eventually scores big when it acquires a new coach, Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau), a grouchy, beer-guzzling pool cleaner who takes the position for some extra cash.
When he realises that his players are a bunch of talentless misfits, he signs up two secret weapons: Amanda Whurlitzer (Tatum O'Neal), the daughter of an ex-girlfriend who also happens to be an awesome pitcher, and Kelly Leak (Jackie Earle Haley), a motorcycle-riding punk who is inarguably the best player in the area.
With their new lineup in place, the Bears breeze their way into the championship game, in which they must battle their rivals, the Yankees, in order to exact revenge and win the title.
The movie went on to spawn two sequels; The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training and The Bad News Bears Go To Japan in which Haley appeared.
He went on to appear in Breaking Away, Dollman and Nemesis before his career went quiet throughout the late nineties and early noughties.
He returned to the big screen in 2006 when he appeared alongside Sean Penn, Jude Law and Kate Winslet in All The King's Men.
But it was 2006's Little Children that brought him critical acclaim as he took on the role of a recently paroled sex offender.
For his role in Todd Field's movie Haley picked up a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, losing out to Alan Arkin, he was also nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award.
Despite missing out on the Oscar and the SAG he won a string of critics awards, including the New York Film Critics Circle Award and Chicago Film Critics Association amongst others.
He went on to work on movies such as Semi Pro and Fragments before landing the role of Rorschach in the big screen adaptation of the graphic novel Watchmen.
With his constantly changing mask the film belongs to psychotic vigilante Rorschach and Haley really is brilliant. There are clear lines between good and evil for this character and in this respect he is the most traditional of the superheroes.
But the scenes in the prison really are superb for this character as this small weasely man have the jail's hardest inmates cowering in fear.
Watchmen was a huge critical hit when it was released last year and put in a solid performance at the box office, for me it was one of the best movies of 2009.
Haley has already been on the big screen this year after appearing gin Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island alongside Leonardo DiCaprio.
But he is back this week in the iconic role of Freddy Krueger as horror franchise A Nightmare On Elm Street gets a 21st Century makeover.
Nancy, Kris, Quentin, Jesse and Dean all live on Elm Street. At night, they're all having the same dream of the same man, wearing a tattered red and green striped sweater, a beaten fedora half-concealing a disfigured face and a gardener's glove with knives for fingers. And they're all hearing the same frightening voice...
One by one, he terrorizes them within the curved walls of their dreams, where the rules are his, and the only way out is to wake up.
But when one of their number dies a violent death, they soon realize that what happens in their dreams happens for real, and the only way to stay alive is to stay awake.
Turning to each other, the four surviving friends try to uncover how they became part of this dark fairytale, hunted by this dark man. Functioning on little to no sleep, they struggle to understand why them, why now, and what their parents aren't telling them.
Buried in their past is a debt that has just come due, and to save themselves, they will have to plunge themselves into the mind of the most twisted nightmare of all...
The movie has already topped the box office in America and looks set to make Haley a star.
A Nightmare On Elm Street is released 7th May.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw