The first man to play masked killer Michael Myers—the real star of the Halloween franchise—was Nick Castle, who went to college and played in a band with Halloween director and co-writer John Carpenter. Castle had no formal training as an actor, but neither did many of his successors—a little less than a dozen actors over the past 40 years.

Their backgrounds range from stunt coordinator (Dick Warlock, of Halloween II) to professional wrestler (6-foot-8-inch Tyler Mane, Adult Michael in the 2007 and 2009 Halloween remakes) to Stella Adler Studio-trained actor (James Jude Courtney, of this year’s Halloween sequel). But all managed to successfully disappear into the part, a role that has transformed over the decades (and 11 films) from the embodiment of “pure evil” (as Donald Pleasence’s paranoid Dr. Loomis put it in the original film) to a recognizably human stain on real, flesh-and-blood survivors like Loomis and Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), Michael’s sister—the P.T.S.D.-stricken star of David Gordon Green’s 2018 Halloween, which comes to theaters October 19.

Michael Myers is, admittedly, a bit of a cipher; in an interview, 2007 Halloween-remake director Rob Zombie aptly described the part as “a lead character whose face you never see, and who never says anything.” But each man who’s played him has brought something unique to the role. Here, seven actors who have played Michael open up about scaring children, walking like wood through water, and setting themselves on fire—all in the name of Halloween.

The role of Michael Myers can be subtly challenging; because the character wears a mask and doesn’t speak, he must be understood through body language. Since the beginning of the Halloween franchise, that has led casting directors, producers, and stunt coordinators to emphasize stunt-readiness over other traditional on-camera experience—and the ability to move with a menacing, catlike grace.

Rob Zombie, Director, Halloween (2007): The funny thing about that mask: it’s so blank that everybody projects on to it what they want to see, and how he should behave. Sometimes, I’d get pushback along the lines of, “Michael Myers can’t do that?” According to who? The Michael Myers Handbook? I never got a copy of that.

Nick Castle, Michael Myers, Halloween (1978): I was paid $25 per day for Halloween. That was a lot at the time! You have to remember: my interest in doing the film was being on set, so I could demystify the experience of filmmaking and directing. I expected to hang around the set for no money. But hey, $25 per day, and all I had to do was wear a rubber mask.

It’s a mystery what John [Carpenter, who directed the first Halloween] saw in me and the way I moved. I asked John, “What is this character going to do?” And he said, “Just walk across the street.” I knew Michael’s movements weren’t going to be robotic. He was a real guy. He’s not rushing.

Dick Warlock, Michael Myers, Halloween II (1981): [Halloween II director Rick Rosenthal] never gave me any instruction on how to play [Michael]—nothing at all about the walk. Debra Hill was there every day, and Debra never said, “Can you make the walk a little faster, Dick?” or “Can you make your movements a little swifter?” Years later, in an interview, she said, “Dick Warlock never got the walk down.” Well, give me a break. I’m a stunt guy; I’m not an actor. If I wasn’t doing it right, you should have told me.

Don Shanks, Michael Myers, Halloween 5 (1989): I went in to meet with [director Dominique Othenin-Girard]. His one direction was, “I want you to get up and walk like wood through water.” I did, and he said, “Perfect, you got it.” I interpreted that direction as: you’re rigid, but you’re still adapting to the water. You’re moving smoothly through the water; you’re not getting pushed through it.

Chris Durand, Michael Myers, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998): Think about how a tiger will lock eyes on its prey with a singular focus.  As I was stalking my victims, I tilted my head down slightly, locked onto them, and did a deep, guttural growl. To his credit, the sound guy picked up on my growling and subtly layered it into the final edit. I don’t believe that any of my castmates ever picked up on that, but it lent a certain primal energy to each take.

James Jude Courtney, Michael Myers, Halloween (2018): Years ago, I met a real hit man through a mutual acquaintance—he wanted his life story written, so he was living with me. He had just left a safe house and served in a penitentiary up in the Northwest. I absorbed his life just by hanging out with him every day. I took him to see a film I was in called The Hit List. We walked out of the screening, and he said to me, “Jimmy, it’s a really nice movie, but that’s not how you kill people.”

“Really?”

“I’m gonna show you how.”

There’s a stealth efficiency to the way an actual trained killer works. Movies tend to dilute that quality with dramatic pauses and dialogue, which a true predator would never waste time doing. That efficiency is what I took to the part of Michael Myers.

Michael has been terrifying children for decades, both on-screen and off—and appearing with the character can be especially frightening for a young actor. Still, many of Michael’s teenage and pre-teen targets have taken to working with him like old pros.

Shanks: [then-11-year-old co-star Danielle Harris] did all her own stunts. I was literally stabbing in the dark, because I can’t see her. They blind Michael at the end of Halloween II, so they put nylon netting over the eyes, which makes it a little difficult doing the stuntwork.

But Danielle trusted me. There’s a scene where I’m chasing her in a car, and I get pretty close to her. But she knows I’m not going to hit her. That gives you a little more freedom to do what you want—to be creative, but not to have that fear of “Is this guy going to hit me?”

Durand: We shot the exterior of the rest-stop sequence on the first day of shooting. The setup: a mom and her young daughter pull into a rest stop, desperately needing to use the bathroom. They rush up to the ladies’ room, but the door is locked. So they go into the men’s room instead. I was supposed to crack the men’s-room door open and peek over the doorframe. But they neglected to tell the little girl that I was in there, and that she wasn’t supposed to pull the door open.

[Seven-year-old actress Emmalee Thompson] marched right up to the door, swung it open, and came face-to-face with Michael. I watched the blood drain from her face.  Boom, that fast—we were down for an hour as I ripped the mask off and helped to get her calmed down again. After about an hour, she decided that I wasn’t such a bad guy after all.

Zombie: There’s a scene, in the first remake, where Michael bursts through the door. Everybody knew what was going to happen, because the scene was in the script. But Tyler’s big, and I don’t know if she [actress Jenny Gregg Stewart] had seen his mask yet. When he came smashing through the door, her scream was completely genuine. She told me it was; she was freaked out.

Tyler Mane, Adult Michael, Halloween (2007) and Halloween II (2009): You mean Jenny Gregg Stewart from the first movie? I don’t remember that! We always rehearse the scenes several times before shooting, and I only put the mask on at the very last minute. So that surprises me, but maybe. In the moment, it’s good that she was scared, I guess!

Daeg Faerch, Young Michael, Halloween (2007): There’s that one shot right before I kill [William Forsythe], and the camera is outside the house looking in. The killing scenes weren’t scary for me, but they left me alone in that house for that take, and I was afraid of the dark. I was young, and I was by myself.

Stuntwork is key to Michael’s enduring appeal; in most Halloween films, the masked villain appears to be just about indestructible. Stunt coordinators like Warlock and Donna Keegan (from Halloween H20) work to ensure their Michaels have what they need to safely hit their marks—but human actors aren’t always as durable as the character they’re playing.

Castle: The most difficult scene is easy for me to remember. It was a scene shot in the middle of the night, where Michael jumps on top of a car as he’s escaping the mental hospital. It wasn’t freezing, but it was in the mid-40s. I was in a hospital gown and underpants. I don’t think John let me know what he had in store for me.

He turns to the crew and says something like, “O.K., start the water cannons.” The hospital’s sprinkler system was more like a fire hose. The water arced into the air, and when it came down on me, it felt like icicles hitting me on the back.

He yells “action.”

It was the most painful thing I’d ever experienced outside of a broken arm. That was the one scene that I really remember thinking, “Maybe I should have got more than $25.”

Shanks: The most physically demanding scene was when Michael gets blown out of the mine shaft, and I fall into the river, at the beginning of the film. That river was full of melted snow, so it was maybe 30 degrees. The mask was stuck to my face, and I couldn’t get the water out. I also had to grab a safety net on the other side of the river and pull myself out. If I missed the net and went around the river’s bend, I’d hit a water processing plant. Then I’d get killed.

Warlock: For the scene where I was set on fire: they quickly flashed on a wall of propane flames, and when I walked through the fire, the flames ignited my suit. Then I walked as slowly as I could. I had six stunt guys standing by with fire extinguishers, just waiting for me.

If you watch closely, you’ll see there’s a little jiggle in my arms, and then I fall down. That’s because I burned my arm. I trusted the guys I got that stunt’s suit from, so I didn’t see that it had zippers on the arm. The flames went right through the suit. They were superficial burns, really; the doc applied a salve to them.

We did the stunt two times; for whatever reason, the first take didn’t work out. It got hot quicker than I thought it would. If it wasn’t for that zipper, I could have gone another 10, 15 seconds. It was intense.

Michael Myers has passed into popular legend—but the men who played him, of course, also have very personal associations with the character. For these actors, Michael brings to mind thousands of enthusiastic horror-conventions fans, as well as co-stars like Pleasence and Curtis—all of whom helped to make Michael an iconic horror monster.

Mane: [Michael] hits a very primitive nerve. He’s human, but he’s not. There’s something very off there when you can’t see the face or read what he’s thinking. He’s like a shark in that you can’t reason with him, you can’t out-run him, and he’s completely unstoppable. Plus, add that white mask with eyes that are skull-like holes, and everything about him screams “death.”

Shanks: One guy came up to me and asked, “How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“What do you do with the bodies?” He thought that we were actually killing people.

Castle: There was a period of time where I’d think, “Oh my god, this is going to go on my tombstone. It won’t say anything about me directing The Last Starfighter. It won’t say anything about anything else. All it’ll say is that I was known as the guy who wore a mask in Halloween.” But then I loosened up. It’s not every day that you can look across your desk and see a plastic figurine of yourself. It’s a lot of fun.

Faerch: I’ve been rapping for seven years now, but my fans kept telling me that they knew me from Halloween, so I figured I should connect the two things together. Doing the music video for “Halloween on Friday the 13th” was really fun. I got to relive—or re-kill—some of my favorite moments.

Normally, fans all understand that it’s just a movie. There are times though when I have to impress upon them that that’s not me. I’m Daeg. I rap and hang out with my friends. I’m not Michael Myers.

Courtney: Fraternities are cool, whether it’s combat veterans or football players or journalists. That’s something that only these guys and I get to know. No one else will get to experience that. Part of the honor of this experience is being able to join a club with these distinguished gentlemen who happen to kill people for a living.

Shanks: One time, I had just wrapped for the night. And [co-star and series regular Donald Pleasence] raps on my trailer door and says, ”Might I ask a favor? I have this scene where I know that you’re out there, and it would help me if I knew that you really were physically out there—even though I don’t see you.” I thought that was the least I could do.