Why 'Terrifier 3' star David Howard Thornton was 'born to play' iconic Art the Clown

Art the Clown has silently and sadistically slashed his way to becoming a horror icon on screen. But the guy underneath the eerie makeup and mini top hat lives for freaking out people in person, too.

“Terrifier” franchise star David Howard Thornton goes to fan conventions in full Art garb and recalls sharing an elevator with a burly security guard suffering from serious coulrophobia. “He’s in the corner, trying to blend into the wall as much as possible,” Thornton says. “And I'm just slowly raising my horn up in his face as we're descending because I'm waiting for that elevator door to open. When it finally does, I honk the horn and he just let out the biggest girlish scream.”

Art has returned to cinemas for “Terrifier 3,” a Christmas-themed installment in which the demonic clown dons a Santa outfit and hunts heroine Sienna Shaw (Lauren LaVera). He does the most heinous things to his victims − one gnarly scene can only be described as a college dude getting a chainsaw colonoscopy − yet there’s a joyous humor and lightness to Art, like the way he does the dishes after killing a family.

“He's considerate,” the actor quips.

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While writer/director Damien Leone’s “Terrifier” flicks have built an infamous reputation for premiere walkouts and vomiting fits, Art has become a beloved figure beyond the horror genre, with Funko Pop toys, popcorn buckets, Halloween decorations and more brandishing his frightful rictus. 

“For Art to be accepted as he has been into the cultural zeitgeist has been fantastic for us,” Thornton says. “We never imagined any of this when we filmed the first (‘Terrifier’) way back in 2015. We were a low-budget independent film: 'Who knows if anybody's going to see this thing?'”

'Terrifier 3' actor hails from Alabama, has an inspiring origin story

In his Art makeup, Thornton’s a dark and menacing presence. In real life, he’s anything but, a good-natured Southern fanboy who loves comic books, Stephen King and Legos. 

Born and raised in Huntsville, Alabama, Thornton, 44, got involved in theater at his parents’ church. He was bullied in middle school, and to get him out of his shy bubble, his mom recommended he audition for a school choir production of “Mickey’s Christmas Carol.” Playing Mickey, “I found my love for acting, especially comedy, because things went wrong on stage and I started improvising on the spot and just started cracking jokes,” Thornton says. “For the first time ever at that school, people were laughing with me instead of at me.”

While majoring in elementary education at Alabama’s University of Montevallo, his mother died of cancer, and “that experience changed my whole trajectory,” Thornton says. “Life's too short not to do what you really want to do. That was my last conversation with my mom.”

So after graduation, he moved to New York in 2006. Thornton waited tables, did odd TV jobs (he played an orderly on Fox's “Gotham" and a coffee shop customer on CBS' “Elementary”) and toured with the musical “How the Grinch Stole Christmas" until “‘Terrifier’ changed my life,” he says. “As hard as some of that was to go through, I would not change anything, because that's what got me where I am now.”

Art the Clown is influenced by silent film actors and 'great horror villains'

Thornton isn’t the first Art the Clown: Mike Giannelli played the villain in the 2013 anthology film “All Hallows' Eve.” But he turned down the role for 2016’s “Terrifier,” so Leone hosted an open audition and was astounded by Thornton’s physicality. The director asked him to act as if he’s gleefully decapitating somebody, and “he was just doing these Jim Carrey-esque, over-the-top theatrical mannerisms and all these wonderful gestures and big grins,” Leone says. “He was born to play this character.”

Art’s evolved since those early days, when Leone was the one applying Thornton’s makeup as the two talked movies with yacht rock and ‘80s tunes in the background. The actor cut his teeth in physical comedy doing children’s shows in his youth, and he married that with his appreciation for film actors like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Andy Serkis and an adoration for “the great horror villains that came before,” Thornton says. Art’s “becoming more confident and more arrogant with himself, and I've had so much fun just fleshing him out and becoming more vicious.”

Playing Art is also "a great stress reliever,” says Thornton, who revels in the moments where he’s asked to “give a little bit extra oomph to a kill. They're like, ‘Wow, Dave, you really have a lot of pent up-anger there.’ This is my therapy. Art therapy, I guess you could say.”

David Howard Thornton dreams of putting his spin on the Joker

There’s more Art in Thornton’s future, with a planned “Terrifier 4.” He also would love to one tackle his "dream role," the Joker: While others have taken on the Batman rival (even one now in theaters), Thornton wants to do “the actual comic-book version” of his favorite all-time villain. So he hopes DC Studios honcho James Gunn is paying attention to a certain other clown: “He is a fellow geek and truly values the source material of the films that he makes.”

But Thornton’s enjoying his run as Art, posing for photos with fans in character at conventions − where he’s sometimes mistaken for a "pretty good" cosplayer and not the real deal − and becoming a modern mainstream symbol for Halloween. The fact that you can actually buy Art the Clown slippers reminds him of his days as a kid going to Shoe Carnival and seeing a mountain of Freddy Krueger merch in the middle of summer.

“It is kind of cool that maybe Art is going to be this younger generation’s Freddy Krueger, in some ways,” Thornton says. “I love that feeling.”