I played Ted Bundy – getting into mind of sadistic killer traumatised me… I refused to act out his most depraved crime | The Sun

AN actor who played serial killer Ted Bundy has revealed how he was left traumatised by the depraved murderer's crimes – and refused to do one horrific scene.

Hollywood star Cori Nemec said the brutally intense scenes – as well as trawling through incredibly sick and twisted details of the killings for research – completely disturbed him.

The 51-year-old played the lead role in Bundy Legacy of Evil back in 2009 and nailed the tough acting gig despite the sensitive nature of the role.

He managed to get through the mentally taxing ordeal but did admit he had to ask for one scene to be cut from the script as it was too far for him to stomach.

Bundy was a known necrophiliac and for Corin, showing that on screen was simply too hard to reenact.

The movie maker called Bundy a very tricky character to portray as the criminal mastermind who confessed to murdering 30 women was “one of the most self-centred, egotistical people but perfectly sane at the same time".

read more in serial killers

GRAVE AWAKENING

Girl, 15, digs up body of serial killer rapist after dreaming he was alive

DEADLY KILLERS

America's worst serial killers – from Ted Bundy to the Zodiac Killer

Corin said he would leave the shoots each day feeling deflated and even said the film had “dampened my hope for humanity”.

Bundy became one of the most prolific murderers in US history after an evil killing spree that spanned four years and seven states.

He confessed to 30 murders between 1974 and 1978 but the real number of victims is still unknown.

He kidnapped, raped and murdered young women who he often charmed and impressed before taking them home.

Most read in The Sun

GET EM OUT!

Fears for ‘exhausted’ I’m A Celeb campmate as they QUIT trial in dramatic scene

ESCAPE FROM HELL

13 Israeli hostages finally FREED 48 days after being kidnapped by Hamas

CHEF TRAGEDY

BBC star & award-winning restaurant owner dies at 57 after short health battle

FINAL MOMENTS

Chilling CCTV shows tragic teens in minutes before horror crash

Bundy was also a horrifying necrophiliac.

After mercilessly killing his female victims, Bundy continued to do awful things to their corpses.

Their torture would continue as twisted Ted often returned to where he dumped the women's bodies to sexually violate them.

The sadistic serial killer was also known to decapitate the women with a hacksaw, before washing their hair and applying makeup.

The maniac took off at least 12 of his tragic victims heads and kept them as warped reminders of his kills.

Bundy even killed two children as young as 12.

The ravaged body of Kimberly Diane Leach was found dumped under a country hog shed after she was kidnapped in Florida.

He also confessed to killing Lynette Dawn Culver, after abducting her and raping the youngster before drowning her in Idaho.

A good villain usually makes a film become iconic – from the Joker to Darth Vader – they are essential in the film world.

Corin, a regular at taking on the bad guy role, usually gets into their minds by thinking about why they’re such terrible human beings to begin with – but struggled for Bundy.

Corin told The Sun: "It’s much easier to play a person who was crazy or an alcoholic because they’re so mentally unstable.

"People would obviously say Ted Bundy has to be mentally unstable too because of his actions, but what I found in researching him was that he wasn't.

"This guy, he truly took pleasure and enjoyed what he did and was obsessive and compulsive about it and that’s what challenged me the most."

Getting into the psyche of a character like Bundy is hard to perfect after the wicked serial killer reached sick new levels of depravity, Corin explained.

And that it was all about approaching the role with a willingness to learn about the man and the persona he put on around others.

The American star said: “There's nothing that I could draw on to play Ted Bundy as no one is anything like him.

“Maybe in some of the scenes where he was in a moment of rage or something there could be a thought back to when I was really angry or whatever, but you're recalling events from your past that aren’t really near the same level.”

BRUTAL SCENES

Playing a serial killer on the big screen means actors will take part in uncomfortable scenes acting out the final moments of a victim's life.

But not everyone can pull off what’s written in the script as Corin found out during the filming.

“Ted Bundy was also a necrophiliac, which was one of the even more worrying parts of the whole thing for me, you know just digging into this guys life and what he was into and it just kept getting darker and darker and darker you know,” he said.

“I had a discussion with the director asking if there was any possible way of being able to just miss out the whole (necrophilia) scene.

“I understood why the scene wanted to be in the script but it was terrible to do.”

Another scene took top spot for the worst though as Corin had to channel his inner demons and act out a scene where a young girl, tied up in the basement of a burnt down, old shack in the desert was being abused by Bundy.

For the actor, the emotions he had to put aside to stay in character made it so tough.

He said: “The intensity of it was horrible and I just couldn't imagine what it would be like to have that sick desire to be the puppet master over another human being.”

But the famed star, who’s been acting since he was a child, got through the hard scenes by telling himself that he can take on these roles no matter what's going on in the scene as no one's going to get hurt or harmed.

It’ll simply be a performance.

The hardest part was shaking off the character at the end of each day because there’s always this energy for any type of character that leaves a hangover

But even though the performance stopped after the cameras shut off the emotional scars didn’t disappear overnight.

Corin described the feeling of driving home feeling sick as a nasty hangover that lingered all night.

He said: “The hardest part was shaking off the character at the end of each day because there’s always this energy for any type of character that leaves a hangover.

“If I'm doing a comedy then at the end of the day I'm replaying moments from when we were filming and laughing and I'm having a good time.

“And it’s like, wow, every day leaving the set I was on cloud nine whereas with Ted Bundy I'm leaving set every day it's just like urgh.

“My energy was so out of wack and no other role that I've ever played in terms of playing villains made me feel like that.”

After every other character he’s played Corin had time afterwards to appreciate his role in bringing the person to life and showing viewers a new side to the role.

But with Bundy this was different.

He said: "I thought it was going to be a challenge but was going to make me feel a type of accomplishment from having achieved the goal of bringing the character of Bundy to life but the opposite was true and I felt horrible that I had participated in it.

"I would never want to play a character like that again."

The 51-year-old father of two lives in Florida with his wife but the memories of playing the sick and twisted killer haven’t left him for almost 15 years.

He explained: "Before and ever since I played Ted Bundy, I've never had an experience of playing a role that had such a negative impact on me during and after the filming.

"I’ve played a character before who kidnapped, molested and abused a kid for seven years and other serial killers but as disturbing as those were and as tragic as the outcome of them was, it still doesn't even compare at all to Bundy.

"Playing him just kind of dashed my flame of hope that I had for humanity, I was like, wow, this is just one of these kinds of people. How many more are there?"

By day five of the shoot, Corin was done with the film and ready to stop playing the traumatising lead role.

Despite Corin's long history of playing villains, he doesn’t believe the movie industry should produce films based on horrific real-life stories to make money.

He said: "I was bummed that I did it because I don't want to glorify these kinds of people but as an actor, it's my job to take on roles and create characters and that's what I've always enjoyed doing since I was a kid.

"I think nowadays we need a real shift in what we see as entertainment.

"I think we need to kind of harken back to a sort of heyday of good-time entertainment as this sort of TV leads to dark tendencies for people and that’s just the nature of it."

Bundy was executed by electric chair on January 24, 1989, when he was just 42 years old after confessing to 30 murders.

Many of the victims family and friends chose to stay quiet on all things Bundy, even throughout the media frenzy when he was made popular again through new stories on the big screen.

Around 10 films and countless TV series have been made in the three decades since his death with most notable being Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile where Bundy was played by megastar Zac Efron.

It was well received and most remembered for Efron nailing the swooning attractive killers charm.

However friends of his final victim, Kimberly Leach, weren't so pleased with the film or the casting choices.

The friend, Lisa Little told First Coast News: "We wish this could get put to rest. We're tired of hearing about Bundy."

"The fact that they're making this new movie outrages me, especially because they're using Zac Efron, who's so cute and attractive."

Lisa called for Hollywood or streaming services to consider making a documentary about the women and girls whose lives he took away.

Kathy Kleiner Rubin was assaulted by Bundy when she was just 20-yeasr-old.

She agreed that the film glorified him more than it needed to but did feel like there was a place for movies like these.

Rubin told TMZ: "I think hopefully it will make more women take care of their surroundings and be cautious.

"He had different tactics that he used to help him get people in cars or do things and in your gut if you feel like something doesn't feel right, just say no.'

No Man Of God was one of the latest films to come out about Bundy and is seen as one of the best retelling of the infamous mans life and death.

A fascinating Amazon Prime series also came out in 2020 that had his girlfriend and her daughter speaking out for the first time in 40 years.

Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer was a new five-part documentary series that dropped some major bombshells.

Source: Read Full Article