Behind the Mask of the Horror Actor [Paperback]

SFX Magazine, November 2004: " This is a compelling, often facinating glipse into the job of a professional scary bloke, and one that informs but never patronises the reader, mere mortals that we are. A job well done." - Rob Power.

The book offers a fascinating history [of] the masked screen monster in silent horror, Universal, Hammer and modern American horror.

Actor Doug Bradley, who portrays Pinhead in Clive Barker's Hellraiser films, gives his own unique and personal guide to cinema monsters and the men who portray them, including legends Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff, and unforgettable creatures like The Wolf Man, Frankenstein's Monster, The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He also examines the many roles the mask has played throughout time, and the physical rigours that actors who play monsters must endure. Coming up to date, he meets the actors behind modern-day monsters Leatherface (Texas Chain Saw Massacre), Freddy Krueger (Nightmare on Elm Street), and Jason (Friday the 13th). Plus, of course, Bradley recounts the making of the Hellraiser movies in detail, revealing just what it's like to actually be the man behind the mask.

Doug Bradley first appeared as Pinhead in the 1987 horror masterpiece Hellraiser, and has continued to play the role in a series of successful movies (the latest instalments, Deader and Hellworld, are due for release in 2004). Other film and TV appearances include starring in Barker's Nightbreed and alongside Robert Englund (A Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy) in The Killer Tongue, and a role in the recent BBC2 dramatisation The Private Life of Samuel Pepys, alongside Steve Coogan.