Nancy Thompson

Nancy Thompson is the Final Girl in the original Nightmare on Elm Street. She also appears in Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. She was portrayed by actress Heather Langenkamp.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Nancy Thompson is a high school student at Springwood High, dating boyfriend Glen Lantz and the product of a divorced household. Her mother is an alcoholic and her father works for the Springwood Police Department. By all accounts, Nancy seems to be a well-adjusted and normal teenage girl.

But she is having nightmares. Nightmares that somebody is trying to kill her. She soon learns that the same dreamstalker is also hunting down her friends, killing them one by one.

While the adults -- Nancy's mother included -- believe she is slipping into madness, Nancy begins learning about the power of dreams. At the Sleep Institute where her mother sends her, she finds herself cut up from her attack in the dream, and the hat she had taken from the head of Fred Krueger, a dead child killer who was murdered by her parents and the other parents of the neighborhood. Realizing that everybody else is paying for the sins of their parents, Nancy decides to go back into the dream and pull Fred Krueger out, allowing her father to arrest him for the murder of her friends and her boyfriend.

Nancy succeeds, taking her energy away from Freddy Krueger and sending him howling back to Hell. However, we soon learn that Nancy was still stuck inside of her dream.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
Between the events of the first and second film, Nancy moved away from Springwood and became a researcher on pattern nightmares, becoming a groundbreaking influence on the subject. She takes a job as an intern at Springwood's Westin Hills Psychiatric facility, where she meets Kristen Parker and others, who are all being traumatized by her old nemesis Freddy Krueger.

Nancy, realizing the danger that the teenagers are in, begs her colleague Dr. Neil Gordon to put them on Hypnocil, a psychoactive drug that would prevent nightmares. Nancy has started taking it since her last encounter with Krueger. After another teenager is killed, Dr. Gordon agrees, though the decision, along with Freddy kidnapping another teenager, gets both Nancy and Neil fired from the facility.

After confronting her estranged father, now a beaten-down alcoholic, Nancy and Neil realize that they have to give the remains of Freddy Krueger a proper burial to conquer him once and for all. While Neil and her father go to take care of Freddy's remains, Nancy learns Kristen has been drugged by Dr. Simms and put into the Quiet Room, where she will be defenseless against Freddy Krueger. Nancy and the remaining teenagers go into the dream together to rescue the missing teenager and provide assistance to Kristen in their final battle.

Nancy is tricked by Freddy, believing an apparition of her father -- who had been killed by Freddy -- was there to say goodbye to her. When she goes to say her final goodbyes, she is stabbed to death by Freddy. In her last act, she saves Kristen from Krueger's clutches.

Trivia
Heather Langenkamp beat over 200 actresses for the role of Nancy Thompson

Demi Moore, Jennifer Grey, Courteney Cox and Tracey Gold all tried out for the role of Nancy

Prior to making A Nightmare on Elm Street, the only horror film Heather Langenkamp had seen was the film Burnt Offerings

Of all her performances, Heather Langenkamp regards Nancy Thompson as her favorite

Running from Freddy in the first film -- prior to the sinking stairs -- Heather cut her foot. She is visibly seen limping in the film