2 min read Stunt News

The Stunt Performers Who Actually Wore the Ghostface Robe in “Scream” — and What the Mask Did to Their Sightlines

The Stunt Performers Who Actually Wore the Ghostface Robe in “Scream” — and What the Mask Did to Their Sightlines
Still: No Film School
  • Stunt performers Lee Waddell and Dane Farwell wore the Ghostface costume in the 1996 film “Scream.”
  • Waddell could barely see out of the mask during the chase with Drew Barrymore on wet grass.
  • Stunt coordinator Anthony Cecere also went on camera as Ghostface, and none of them were credited.

Posted: October 27, 2026

Thirty years on, the most-reproduced horror silhouette of the last three decades turns out to be a stunt credit nobody printed. Working from the film’s credits, No Film School lays out who was actually inside the robe: Lee Waddell and Dane Farwell both performed Ghostface, with stunt coordinator Anthony Cecere going on camera in the costume as well. All of them uncredited. Deep Focus Review puts most of the on-screen Ghostface work on Farwell and has Wes Craven himself in the costume for parts of the opening.

The craft problem is the one every performer in a full-face mask knows. Waddell, first into the costume, had almost no usable sightline through the eye holes — and the opening-sequence chase runs over wet grass, at speed, around a principal. That is a stunt being performed blind in a situation where footing is already compromised, which is why the costume goes on a stunt performer rather than the actor in the first place: it protects the lead’s schedule and it puts the risk on someone trained to absorb it.

Craven then shot that chase overcranked so it plays back slow, which does two things at once — it stretches the dread, and it gives the masked performer a little room, because a move run at speed for a high-frame-rate camera reads larger and cleaner than the same move played at twenty-four. The mask itself was off the shelf: a Fun World piece designed by Brigitte Sleiertin after a cartoon ghost in a 1933 Betty Boop short, rejected by Craven in favour of an original design and then brought back weeks later. Roger L. Jackson delivered the voice live from another room, off camera, so the cast heard the calls in real time rather than in post — editor Patrick Lussier says none of them were added later.

Source: No Film School — Who Was Under the Mask? Who Played Ghostface in the Original ‘Scream’?

Learn more on IMDb: Scream (1996) · Lee Waddell · Dane Farwell · Anthony Cecere