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Matthew Lillard has been scaring audiences for a long time — but he recently admitted he’s the one getting spooked these days.
Lillard revealed to PEOPLE in an exclusive conversation ahead of the release of his new scary movie, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, that one of his first jobs was working at a Halloween haunted house.
“I was a haunt actor at Knott’s Scary Farm when I was 19 years old,” Lillard, 55, recalls. “And I ran around the asylum with my clothes ripped off and scaring people. And that’s one of my first jobs I ever had.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone that. That’s a PEOPLE exclusive,” he jokes.
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The Scooby Doo star said that he still gets scared at haunted houses, despite having worked in one professionally.
“Last year I went through a [haunted house] at Universal Studios […] and I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be lame.’ It scared the bejesus out of me,” he admits.
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However, Lillard also said that he thinks there’s something “exhilarating about being scared.”
Dimension Films
“I think that that’s why [the horror] industry is so big and so popular. […] I think that people long to feel things, right? That’s why comedies are great, and horror movies are great, because you feel things sitting in a dark theater,” he explains. “And this [is] spooky season, like going to a haunt or going to a local haunted house. I mean, all of that is really why this is such a juggernaut of a holiday.”
The star — who is also set to appear in Scream 7 in 2026 — recently used his scare-king status in a partnership with Exact Sciences to help spread awareness about Cologuard, a noninvasive at-home screening test for colon cancer.
The new ad features Lillard home alone when he hears an ominous knock. He tentatively approaches his entryway and opens his front door to find … a cheerful, helpful delivery man handing him a Cologuard test — the joke being that getting tested for colorectal cancer doesn’t have to feel scary at all.
“Colorectal cancer is the number two killer of people in the world. And so I just feel like […] if I could do something, if I can lift the message and sort of change people’s perception of being tested, then it’s a win,” he says of his partnership with the brand.
