Heather Langenkamp

This attractive, youthful leading lady of film and TV effectively conveys strength and intelligence while compelling audience sympathy. Langenkamp gained some small measure of fame and a place in genre film history playing Nancy Thompson, the determined and resourceful heroine of Wes Craven's "Nightmare on Elm Street" series (beginning in 1984), battling dream monster Freddy Krueger. Though she had starred in one previous feature--playing a rural, unwed teenaged mother in the little-seen "Nickel Mountain" (1983)--horror auteur Craven proved central to her slight film career. Langenkamp starred in the Craven co-scripted "A Nightmare on Elm Street III: Dream Warriors" (1987), played the victim in Craven's "Shocker" (1989) and starred as herself in "Wes Craven's New Nightmare" (1994).