Heather Langenkamp

Auditions occurred at a nearby elementary school where the casting director took a Polaroid of her; Langenkamp got a call back to appear in a high school scene, in which she had to wear attire based on 1950s fashion.

Coppola was shooting another film in Tulsa the same summer, Rumble Fish, after The Outsiders; Langenkamp's friend got a phone call to appear in a street scene, and her friend's mother felt more comfortable with Langenkamp going with her to the set at night.

The casting director allowed her to join and gave dialogue to Langenkamp—in which she did several takes of her saying dialogue to Matt Dillon's character; The Outsiders and Rumble Fish did not include her scenes but helped her get into the Screen Actors Guild.

These positive experiences made Langenkamp feel like she should attempt to pursue an acting career in Hollywood.

Heather Elizabeth Langenkamp (born July 17, 1964) is an American actress, writer, director, disc jockey, and producer.

Although she has acted in many film genres, she is primarily known for her work in horror films, in addition to her work on television sitcoms.

At age eighteen, Langenkamp worked for the Tulsa Tribune where she saw an advertisement looking for extras for Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders in the summer of 1982.

Born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, while working for the Tulsa Tribune at the age of 18, she appeared as an extra in the Francis Ford Coppola productions The Outsiders (1983) and Rumble Fish (1983); while attending Stanford University, she played her first leading role in the little-seen Nickel Mountain (1984).

Her breakthrough role was as the resourceful 15-year-old heroine Nancy Thompson in Wes Craven's slasher film A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)—the first film in the franchise of the same name.

While studying at Stanford University, she would travel to Los Angeles on the weekends to pursue auditions, where she had her first official Hollywood audition for Drew Denbaum's independent drama film Nickel Mountain (1984).

While auditioning, her rented car got hit by a runaway truck on Cahuenga Boulevard.

Denbaum and the casting director helped Langenkamp during the ordeal.

She bonded with them and got cast in the lead role of Callie Wells.

She has expressed regret for doing the nude scene as she feared voicing her discomfort while filming—as she was an up-and-coming actress.

Her next role was Beth, the daughter of Joanne Woodward and Richard Crenna's characters in the CBS television film Passions (1984).

The direction towards her character received praise.

Langenkamp reflects, "It was a complex part. Richard plays a philandering husband who has a son with his mistress, so my character was acting like a bridge between these two families."

Langenkamp became aware of auditions for a horror film known as A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) at the end of 1983.

Casting director Annette Benson was familiar to Langenkamp as she had brought her in to read for the lead role in Night of the Comet (1984); the part ultimately went to Catherine Mary Stewart.

She auditioned for the highly sought after role of fifteen-year-old heroine Nancy.

There were not enough chairs to accommodate the number of actresses auditioning.

Her reading impressed both Benson and director Wes Craven enough that she was asked to read with another actress auditioning, Amanda Wyss.

Craven stated that he wanted someone very "non-Hollywood" and someone who embodied the "all-American, girl-next-door" for the role and believed that Langenkamp had these qualities.

Craven informed her that she got the part in the winter of 1984, although filming didn't begin until June of that year.

On television, she has appeared in Growing Pains (1988-1990), Just the Ten of Us (1988-1990), Perversions of Science (1997), and the Mike Flanagan Netflix series The Midnight Club (2022).

She reprised her role as Nancy in the third film and appeared as a fictionalized version of herself in the meta film Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994).

Langenkamp has been referred to as a scream queen and was inducted into the Fangoria Chainsaw Hall of Fame in 1995.

Together they run AFX Studio, where she has worked as a special make-up effects coordinator for films such as Dawn of the Dead (2004), Cinderella Man (2005), Evan Almighty (2007), and The Cabin in the Woods (2012).

Heather Elizabeth Langenkamp was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Her mother, Mary Alice (née Myers), is an artist.

Her father, Robert Dobie Langenkamp, is a petroleum attorney.

Her father was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy in the Carter Administration, where he was partially responsible for realizing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

He worked under the Clinton Administration, where he helped with privatizing Naval Petroleum Reserve No. 1.

He later was the Director of the National Energy & Environmental Law & Policy Institute of the University of Tulsa College of Law.

She later moved to Washington, D.C. after her father's appointment to the Carter administration, where she attended the National Cathedral School for Girls, with classmate and future Stanford University roommate Susan Rice.

Langenkamp has worked on two documentary films; executive producing and narrating Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy (2010), which focuses on the making of all of the Nightmare films; and starring in and producing I Am Nancy (2011), which centers on the legacy of Nancy.

Since the 2010s, Langenkamp has worked as a disc jockey for the Malibu radio station KBUU-LP, going under the pseudonym Sandy Bottoms.

Langenkamp has also appeared in the films The Butterfly Room (2012), Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), and My Little Pony: A New Generation (2021).

She wrote and directed the short film Washed Away (2019).

Langenkamp's second husband is award-winning makeup artist David Leroy Anderson.