Bill Skarsgard was 'terrified just looking at the image' of Nosferatu's Count Orlok

Bill Skarsgard was "terrified just looking at the image" of Count Orlok in 'Nosferatu'.

The 34-year-old actor plays the dreaded Transylvanian vampire in the upcoming horror flick – which is a reimagining of the 1922 silent picture 'Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror' – and Skarsgard has now admitted the character's appearance was far more frightening than that of his Pennywise the Dancing Clown costume from his two 'It' movies.

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, he said: "I was terrified just looking at the image. It looked so, so different from me, way more so than Pennywise.

"I was worried that I couldn't perform through it, that it would feel like giant prosthetic pieces, and I couldn't come alive through that."

As for the sound of Orlok, Skarsgard revealed that director Robert Eggers wanted the evil character to have a "very deep, resonant voice" but also "frail" to add to his unnerving portrayal.

He explained: "The character is somewhat paradoxical because he's very powerful and demanding, but there's something frail about him, as well, because he's a corpse.

"So the voice needs to be very powerful, but at the same time, there needs to be some sort of fragility or almost pain and labour in his breathing and talking."

Skarsgard chose to hide away from his co-stars – which includes Nicholas Hoult, Willem Dafoe, Emma Corrin, Lily-Rose Depp and Aaron Taylor-Johnson – when he was dressed as Orlok to enhance the impact of seeing him when he had fully transformed into the character, and the actor wants audiences to experience that same level of horror when they see the vampire for the first time on screen in January.

He said: "I think the best way to discover Orlok is through the movie for the first time.

"The movie functions on that, as well. He lives in the shadows for a long time, and it teases the reveal of the character as the movie progresses."