You likely know horror icon Heather Langenkamp from her iconic final girl role as Nancy Thompson in the 1980s slasher franchise A Nightmare on Elm Street. Langenkamp has recently re-entered the horror stratosphere with her stand-out role in Mike Flanagan and Leah Fong's latest Netflix series The Midnight Club. What you may not know is that in the years between these two iconic roles, Langenkamp made a brief appearance in another legendary franchise: Star Trek. The actress recently sat down with Collider's Perri Nemiroff for an interview in which she told Nemiroff about her time in the Kelvinverse movie Star Trek Into Darkness.
For a bit of context, Langenkamp and her husband David Leroy Anderson own and operate the award-winning make-up effects company AFX Studio in California. “So my husband is the designer. He designs everything, and then we have a crew that helps us make everything — mold makers, painters, hair punchers, feather layers — every kind of crazy craft in the industry," Langenkamp told Nemiroff. "I’m more of the manager of the company," she continued, "I make sure people are coming in and doing their jobs. I’m not really that involved in the artistry of it, but I am there every day.”
In the 1980s, Langenkamp appeared opposite Robert Englund's Freddy Kruger in A Nightmare on Elm Street, the threequel, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, and the seventh film in the franchise, Wes Craven's New Nightmare. During her chat with Nemiroff, the actress told Collider that she'd "always wanted to wear prosthetic makeup because watching Robert Englund do it so much, and it wasn’t easy, and I knew that as an actor it’s just a fun thing to get to wear a big prosthetic makeup."
Luckily, when J.J. Abrams' Star Trek sequel came around in 2013, Langenkamp finally got her chance. AFX did the makeup effects for the film and when production decided they needed a few more aliens in a particular scene, Langenkamp was ready to step in. She told Nemiroff:
"I played that character Moto that had been made for me for another project actually, and we just kind of had it laying around and they just wanted some more creatures in this particular scene, so David [LeRoy Anderson] said, ‘Well, we can put Heather in this makeup.’ So it was five hours of makeup. It was a lot of makeup. And my father-in-law Lance Anderson, who is also a makeup effects artist, he applied it, and it was a really special day for me because I had my father-in-law doing my makeup. And it looked fantastic and I loved it. And unfortunately, it’s not in the film for very long, but it was a very special makeup.”
You can watch Star Trek Into Darkness on Paramount Plus, A Nightmare on Elm Street is available on HBO Max, and Langenkamp's latest performance in The Midnight Club is now streaming on Netflix. Check out Nemiroff's Ladies Night conversation with Langenkamp down below.