Ever wondered about the actors behind creatures in The Lord of the Rings and Doctor Who? Well, grad Robert Strange is one such actor.
Robert graduated from the One Year Course in 2012 and has since carved out an impressive career in creature performance. His credits include The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and The Wheel of Time.
We recently caught up with Robert to talk about Return to Silent Hill, his creature work, an upcoming biopic, and how his OSD training is still central to his process today!
By Omi Mantri
Interview edited for clarity and length
Firstly, congrats on Return to the Silent Hill. How was filming?
Filming Return to Silent Hill was great fun! We shot it back in 2023, in South Germany and Serbia, which I loved as I always enjoy travelling with work. I worked closely with the special effects prosthetics team at Millennium FX, who I’ve worked with many times before and who are always so much fun.
When you’re in a suit or full prosthetics, someone is with you all day making sure you can see, drink, and generally survive. They become your kind of personal wellbeing make-up person, and I was very lucky to be looked after by some amazing people. We had a good laugh!
What was the audition process like?
I was very jammy with this one and didn’t have to do much auditioning. I’ve worked with Millennium FX a lot over the years on projects like Doctor Who, Boys from County Hell, and Red Dwarf, so they know me well. A lovely lady named Kate, who runs the company, often reaches out to say, “I’ve put you forward for this job, are you free?” usually before I even know what it is! With this one, she said “It’s a big film and something really iconic in the horror world”, and I trusted her judgment straight away.
There wasn’t a meeting with the director, they trusted Millennium completely, which luckily has been the case on a lot of creature work I’ve done. Once you find someone 6’5 who can survive long hours in a creature suit and will voluntarily sit in a make-up chair for 7 hours, people tend to hold on to them.
What was the most memorable moment of filming Return To Silent Hill?
Trying on the Pyramid Head helmet for the first time during a fitting at Millennium’s workshop. I already knew how iconic the character was, especially in the creature world, so putting on that huge pyramid head was pretty cool!
On set, it was a massive, heavy fiberglass helmet that you can’t really see or breathe out of. So, the first feeling was heaviness and humidity and figuring out how it worked. The design was actually very simple. It slotted on and off easily, which made filming much more straightforward. It’s by far the biggest helmet I’ve ever worn, and once it was on, I couldn’t see the world around me at all.
Wow. Did you study the previous Silent Hill films and games or did you try to bring something entirely new to the role?
I really did study it all. I rewatched both Silent Hill films, particularly the first one directed by Christophe Gans. I didn’t play the game, a) because I don’t have the right console and b) horror video games are absolutely petrifying. But I watched a lot of Pyramid Head gameplay footage on YouTube! I also studied Roberto Campanella, who played Pyramid Head in the earlier films.
Fun fact, I turned up on set and Roberto was the movement director, which was lovely! He was the perfect person to tutor me. I rehearsed with him for a few days before filming, working with the helmet and the sword. But yes, I wanted to stay as faithful as possible to the original character, especially the game, while also bringing something new to it. It was about paying homage, but also making it my own Pyramid Head.
Pyramid Head is one of the most recognisable monsters not only in the gaming world but in the horror world more broadly. Did you feel any pressure stepping into this world, which has such a devoted fan base, and how did you deal with that pressure?
A little, yes. I know how much Pyramid Head means to people, not just in gaming but in the wider horror world, and you want to do it justice. At the same time, you know you can’t please everyone. As long as I come away feeling I’ve done my research, done the work, and been professional and diligent, that’s really all you can do.
Silent Hill monsters often represent psychological trauma. Did you approach this character more symbolically or more instinctively through movement?
Pyramid Head represents the darkest parts of James’ psyche, and there’s a lot of really thoughtful writing out there about the symbolism of Silent Hill. I did read into it because I found it interesting, but I don’t think you can really approach a character like that purely symbolically.
What was more useful was watching the lead actor and picking up on small mannerisms so there was a sense that these characters were coming from the same place. Little things like how he moved his hands or held his body. But I don’t think the audience needs that spoon-fed. People should be able to read their own meaning into it.
So in the end, I approached it from the outside in, which is how I often work with creature roles. You’re put into this massive muscle suit, with a huge helmet and a heavy sword, covered in scars, and everything is about weight. Weight and pain. Even when the movement is fast or violent, it should still feel labour-intensive and brutal.
Moving away from Silent Hill. What was it like to play Glûg, one of the first Orcs with a story arc, in Rings of Power and possibly all of Middle Earth?
That role was very special to me. People always ask, “What’s your favourite creature you’ve ever done?”, and it’s hard to choose, but if my hand is forced, that one often wins. It was the biggest role I’d ever played and my first recurring role in a TV show. The circumstances meant a lot too. I filmed season one in New Zealand during the pandemic, then came back to the UK and was offered the role in season two, so it all felt very full circle.
I know some fans have pointed out that there have been orcs with arcs before, and I’m aware of that, but for me, it was still something really special. I did a lot of research into Tolkien’s writing about orcs and the nature of evil, which I found fascinating. I thought it was really brave of the writers to give an orc more depth, because they’re often just written as simple villains or cannon fodder. Giving them more shade makes people uncomfortable, because it forces you to question how clear-cut good and evil really are.
I love that debate, and I loved being part of something that wasn’t afraid to explore it.
You recently played Eelfinn in The Wheel of Time and have worked across five Star Wars films as a creature performer and droid puppeteer, among many other projects. What’s one thing you’ve learned on set from working on productions of that scale that’s really stayed with you?
I think the biggest thing I’ve learned from doing creature work is patience. It was never a path I planned at all, but it’s pushed me physically in ways I didn’t think I was capable of, and taught me how to sit with discomfort, breathe, and find more energy when you think you’re spent. That’s been surprisingly powerful, and it carries into real life, too.
I’ve also learned how important kindness is on set. Film sets can be very political, and because of the nature of my work I often move between cast, prosthetics, makeup, stunts and background, so I see a lot from the outside in. I couldn’t do my job without the teams who look after me, especially makeup, so when I see people being rude or dismissive to anyone on set, it really sticks with me. Basic kindness and respect matter, on set and off.
In the Doctor Who universe, you’ve played the roles of Sergeant Zogorth, Bogeyman and Missbelindachandrabot. Is it easier to approach different characters that inhabit the same world?
Yeah, it definitely helps working on different characters in the same world. A lot of the Doctor Who monsters are made by Millennium, so there’s that familiarity and shorthand straight away. You’re often working with the same crew, sometimes the same directors, and lots of familiar faces, which makes it much easier to slot back in and find the tone and energy of the show.
Doctor Who is such an honour to be part of. I never imagined I’d play characters like Sergeant Zogorth or a creature made of bogeys, but here we are. And after 13 years of playing monsters, I’ve just had my first official action figure made, which is pretty wild. I haven’t got one yet, but it’s on the list.
I also keep little mementoes from jobs. An ear from one character, a finger from another, some slime, bits of pipework. One day I want to make a kind of mini museum of oddities. Very strange, but quite fitting.
Brilliant, I see what you did there.
Your characters often communicate with little or sometimes no words. How do you convey emotion and intent purely through movement and presence?
I think it’s really about embodiment and committing fully. One of the biggest lessons I learned came from my very first creature job on Penny Dreadful. It was my first professional job, straight out of drama school. I’d had seven hours of makeup, was bald, covered head to toe, and suddenly I was 30 or 40 feet up on a wire about to film, with very little rehearsal. I realised in that moment that you cannot wait for permission or more time. You have to do the preparation yourself and then just go for it.
With creature work especially, there can’t be any self-consciousness. If you’re embarrassed or half in, it shows immediately. You have to commit fingertip to toe tip, even when there are a hundred members of the crew watching you and that little voice in your head is telling you to stop. You just have to silence that and say, I’m going to be a monster for a bit.
A lot of that comes from drama school. At OSD, one of my favourite memories is being a walrus in animal studies. I was very light and floaty, and they wanted me to find more grounding. Doing that work, with no shame, taught me so much about presence and commitment. Every now and then, if I’m at a party and someone’s got me enough drinks, I’ll do the walrus. I’m quite proud of it!
Apart from the source material, what other things do you derive inspiration from when creating characters?
A lot of it comes from instinct and conversations with the creators. But a lot also comes from what I learned at OSD. For physical roles, the tools I find most useful are animal studies and Laban, and I do think about them often.
Animal studies give a framework for movement, weight, gaze, rhythm, and predator or prey energy. Laban is practical but creative, giving structure while letting you explore. Even in background roles, like in Star Wars, I try to give life and energy to the character. For big creatures like Pyramid Head or in Lord of the Rings, it’s about making them feel grounded, real, and fully alive.
Do you have any tips for actors who’d like to get into creature work?
Well, if you sign up to my Patreon, I’m just kidding.
I’ve been asked this a lot over the years. Honestly, there isn’t an easy way in. Your physique and size can help because creatures are often very big or very small, but that’s just a starting point. More important is movement experience, staying physically active, and doing stunt work. I ended up learning a lot on the job, which was invaluable, especially for hand-to-hand combat or weapons.
Having a good movement director or creature coordinator on set is huge. I met Paul Kasey early in my career, he ran the audition for Penny Dreadful. I asked him for a coffee, and he gave me tips on how to get started in creature work. A few months later he invited me to send my details for a film project, which turned out to be Star Wars Episode 7. He’s been a mentor, guiding me through everything from movement to animatronics, and I owe so much to him. Big shout out to Paul.
You’ve also played characters with a wide range of accents and different types of voices. Are there any practical tips you have for actors to learn accents or do different voices?
I love voice work. At drama school I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. I’d done school and student plays all my life but never proper voice training. I learned how connected the body and performance are. You can’t speak or breathe without your body, and you can’t have a character without it, so it became this link between me and the character.
That love of voice makes accents and different voices really fun. For Wheel of Time, there was a dialect coach called Naomi who created an entire language, The Old Tongue. My character exists in this otherworldly dimension, so I recorded every line in both English and The Old Tongue, and they cut together what they wanted. We wanted an accent that didn’t exist in this world, so we really worked on the details, picking sounds from different places. I also like learning languages just for fun, which helps with accents too.
For creatures, it’s different. You’re screaming, growling, hissing, clicking, all that stuff. I love it. At drama school, I learned how to do it safely, and it’s all about connecting to the body and releasing it. The main tip is the same as before with creatures: forget self-consciousness. If you’re going to growl in front of 200 people on set, just go for it and own it.
Moving on from creatures, you were also recently announced to play the leading role of Antoine-Amédée-Marie-Vincent Manca Amat de Vallombrosa, Marquis de Morès in the upcoming feature film, Medora: Empress of the Badlands. Can you tell us anything about that project?
Yes, it was a very special and fun project! The film is a biopic about the Marquis de Morès, a Frenchman in the 1880s who married into money and decided to make his own fortune with cattle. He went out to the Dakota Badlands, built a town from scratch called Medora after his wife, and made a fortune from his slaughterhouse and shipping meat, even developing ideas for refrigerated meat.
But the local cowboys got envious, sabotaged him, and he ended up losing everything in disgrace. It’s a true story that people in the area know well, but it’s largely unknown elsewhere. He was ambitious, charming, a linguist, a fencer, a horse rider, and constantly challenged by his wife, who apparently was an even better shooter and horse rider than him.
We filmed in North Dakota, including the actual house he built for his wife, which is still standing. The town even has a statue of him, and every summer they put on the Medora Musical, a play about the area. I’d never played a real person before, never done a biopic, so being there and stepping into his life was really moving. He wasn’t a saint, he was fallible, but that’s what makes him fascinating.
The film should be out this year, with a North Dakota release first, and hopefully streaming after that. And yes, he was French, so the director wanted a thick French accent, and I even grew and curled my own moustache every day for the role, which was a surprisingly stressful but fun.
Have you always been interested in acting?
Oh yes, definitely. I was a little bit of a show-off from a very young age. I remember doing performances at home with my sister for my parents, and at my first school we did public speaking, reading poems and stories, which probably helped.
My very first performance ever was as a thorn in Sleeping Beauty, standing on stage staring while older kids held my hand. There’s even a VHS of me pulling my socks up, completely unaware of stage presence.
Then when I was around six or seven, we did The Pied Piper of Hamelin and I played the title role. My best friend, who’s still my oldest friend, played a rat. We were competitive and she and the rest of the class, all dressed as rats, followed me around while I skipped and played the recorder in a yellow and red cape. That experience probably kicked off the acting bug I’ve had ever since.
Was there was there a particular moment in your life you decided to pursue acting as a career?
Honestly, I don’t think there was a single moment. I think I always knew I wanted to do it, but maybe out of fear or worry about judgment, I didn’t say it aloud. I went to university and studied biochemistry, thinking I might do something practical like science journalism, but I knew research in a lab wasn’t for me.
I decided to apply to drama school at the end of uni. I hadn’t planned to go to OSD at first, since I’d been studying in Oxford at Oxford University, but I applied last minute. I got the very last audition of the year, the day before my final fourth year biochemistry exams! I hadn’t slept, I was stressed, and I remember thinking, what am I doing?
On the morning of my final exam, I got the email with my audition results. I stared at it for ages, not sure if I should open it. And I found I got in. The exam went fine, surprisingly, and everything worked out. That one-year course was incredible, crammed full of training, in the countryside, and I met people I’m still close friends with today. No regrets at all.
Talking about Oxford, when you stepped onto Max Klymenkos career ladder you mentioned the classical training you received at OSD. Looking back was there a time at the school that was of particular significance?
Oxford was really good at bringing me down a peg or two, in a good way. I’d always done well academically, got into a strong university, and somehow balanced that with doing too many student plays, so I had a slightly inflated opinion of myself. Drama school levelled us all. For me, it was eye-opening.
You’re constantly told you’re not breathing right, moving right, or respecting line breaks in Shakespeare. It doesn’t matter what degree you have or how many GCSEs you have. On stage, you’re just a body in front of a room of people. That taught me so much about physicality, presence, and letting go of perfection. I’m really grateful for it. Acting isn’t about being perfect, it’s about engaging fully with the work.
How did you find transitioning from drama school into the industry?
It was a fun but challenging time. I moved to London after our final show at the Soho Theatre with three classmates, George [Jovanovic], Kiran [Sonia Sawar], and Zena [Carswell]. I look back at my tax returns for that first year and think like “God, I earned like four figures for the whole year. How on earth did we do it?” Somehow we got by, and the excitement of starting out kept us going.
Oxford really helped because the professional development there gave me a solid basis for understanding the industry. We learned about CVs, showreels, contacting theatres, and even setting up your own projects. I started doing student films, scratch nights, and small plays, building connections along the way.
My advice for anyone starting out is to focus on your peers. You won’t always land a big role immediately, but the people you collaborate with early in your career are often the ones directing or producing later. It’s a hustle, but relationships make all the difference.
Jumping off the back of that I was going to say how important do you think it is for actors to create their own work today?
Super important. There’s a huge range of what that means. It could be something big, like the new Baby Reindeer, or it could just be you and some friends doing a play reading in your lounge for a handful of people. It’s just good to be creative, and if you have an idea, do something about it. I wish I’d followed my own advice more over the years.
One thing I’ve done that I’m glad of is writing down all my ideas. I keep really well-curated lists, colour-coded and alphabetised. I haven’t always acted on them, but you never know when an idea might develop or lead to an amazing collaboration.
It also took me years to stop comparing myself to others. Not everyone is going to create or write in the same way, and that’s fine. Some actors are purely performers, some also write, and some focus on other things. You’ve just got to find your balance, push yourself, but also be realistic and not make yourself unwell with pressure.
To wrap up, final question. Is there any advice you’d give to someone about to audition for OSD?
Be present and have a laugh.
Quick fire Questions
-
Film or TV?
Film -
Film or Theatre?
Theatre -
Classical or Contemporary work?
Classical -
Bodycon or Voicecon?
Voicecon -
Favourite subject at OSD?
Voice -
Favourite project at OSD?
Animal Studies -
Self-tape or In person auditions?
Self-tape -
What’s your favourite accent to do?
Welsh -
What accent do you want to learn?
New York
A huge thank you to Robert for chatting with us about his career so far and his time at OSD. If you’re interested in Robert’s work, you can find him @strange.robert on Instagram. He’s just wrapped filming on Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol, as the Ghost of Christmas Future – so keep your eyes peeled for more news on that!