Bill Skarsgård worked with an opera singer to produce terrifying ‘vampire voice’ for Nosferatu

8 January 2025, 12:58

A professional opera singer coached the renowned actor to help his tone sound menacing enough.

Vampire thrillers have been a mainstay of popular culture for centuries now. Ever since Bram Stoker’s Dracula was published in 1897, the world has never seemed to have enough blood-sucking content.

For better or worse, the Twilight series has become immensely popular and more recently, the hilarious mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows has been critically acclaimed.

In 2024, Nosferatu was released, starring the renowned Swedish actor Bill Skarsgård. A remake of F. W. Murnau's 1922 silent film Nosferatu, which is itself inspired by Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula.

The spooky gothic horror film has all the right ingredients for a vampire flick: menacing old buildings, terrifying prosthetics and the right amount of intrigue to keep you guessing.

Startling too is Skarsgård’s unnerving, fear-inducing roar, which you would be forgiven for thinking is some form of technical wizardry. Not so, however, as the actor has revealed that the noise is his real voice, inspired by opera!

Read more: Eighteen opera-goers treated for severe nausea after opera of live sex, nuns and blood

Watch the Nosferatu trailer starring Lily-Rose Depp and Bill Skarsgard

Count Orlok – the Vampire Skarsgård plays – is constantly wheezing, rolling his R’s and producing a deep guttural sound.

To achieve these unusual vocal emissions, Skarsgård was trained by an Icelandic opera singer, Ásgerður Júníusdóttir, who worked with the actor on lowering his own voice an octave for the full Orlok.

“A lot of it was just the technicality of rooting the voice as deep as you can in your body and using your entire body to make the voice resonate,” said Skarsgård in an interview with USA Entertainment Today, who took tips from the opera star like “place the voice out of your forehead.”

Opera singers are renowned for their ability to control their voice, requiring years of expert honing to be able to tackle the technical difficulties of a career in the profession.

Skarsgård practised Orlok’s tone in his living room, building a 20-minute routine for himself where he’d warm up his voice – but not too warm, “because I needed that gravelliness to it” – and then the actor would do vocal exercises between takes to ensure his voice stayed open.

“I was so relaxed, and it was just like the most vibrant my voice has ever gotten,” he said. The actor was then able to use this vocal freedom to provide a terrifying voice in the film.

Don’t mess with opera singers, they are vampirically terrifying!