Javier Botet – Horror Movement Actor

If you’re a horror movie fan, you’ve probably seen a movie with Javier Botet. He’s one of the most used horror movie actors in recent years. He just tends to be completely unrecognizable in his roles.

Javier Botet is almost unreal. In fact, when I first realized that the zombie origin girl in the original Spanish version of [REC] wasn’t simply CGI, I couldn’t believe it.

Then I found out who Javier Botet was.

With an impressive height of 6′ 6¾” (or 2 meters), his tall and slender frame carries just 120 pounds. This alone is enough to create an appearance that seems either distorted or unreal.

Check out this screen test of Javier Botet getting into the character of Mama in Andrés Muschietti’s Mama from 2013:

Unfortunately, the explanation for this is a horror story in itself.

Marfan syndrome made this horror icon

Javier Botet was born on July 30, 1977, in Ciudad Real (Spain).

When he was just a boy at 5 years old, he was diagnosed with the rare disease Marfan syndrome. This is a genetic disorder that affects the body’s connective tissue.

Only about 1 in 5,000 have the disease, so it’s not that uncommon. Marfan syndrome affects both men and women, and all races and ethnic groups. It doesn’t affect intelligence, but can be quite disabling and even life-threatening.

Javier Botet has undergone surgery five times – so far.

However, he has also managed to use having Marfan syndrome as a career path.

He has simply taken advantage of his appearance and physical characteristics to characterize diabolic and paranormal characters. Lucky for us, such characters tend to show up in awesome horror movies.

Javier Botet portrayed iconic characters such as:

Niña Medeiros in REC, REC 2, REC 3: Génesis, and REC 4: Apocalypse.

The ghosts of Margaret McDermott, Pamela Upton, and Enola Sciotti in Crimson Peak, a witch in Don’t Knock Twice, and the already mentioned Mama in Mama.

But it doesn’t stop with hardcore horror movies. Javier Botet also provided the Xenomorph motion capture for Alien: Covenant and was Set in The Mummy.

Much more awesome horror in the making

Also, he portrayed “The Crooked Man” in The Conjuring 2 . This means he will be getting his own spin-off. Just like The Nun which is a character in The Conjuring 2, it’s been confirmed that “The Crooked Man” will have a movie as well.

And since he’s still very much active, we will soon see him again. He’s in some of the most anticipated horror films this Fall:

Mara, Polaroid, Insidious: Chapter 4, and the most anticipated horror movie this year: Stephen King’s IT. Of course, this new adaptation is directed by Andrés Muschietti, who also used Javier for Mama.

In IT, Javier Botet will portray “The Leper”. There’s already an image out of Javier Botet as The Leper – though it is an unconfirmed picture.

For me, the name Javier Botet is an instant seal of approval. Sure, the movies may not all be awesome, but you can be damn sure he will be.

Much like Doug Jones (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy, The Strain), who tends to take on similar roles. And yes, Guillermo del Toro does tend to work a lot with Doug Jones, so if you’ve watched anything by him, you’ve seen Doug Jones.

While Doug Jones has double-jointed legs, he doesn’t suffer from Marfan syndrome. Hopefully, Javier Botet will become as well-known a name as Doug Jones has become.

Want to know more about Marfan syndrome? There’s lots of information on the website for The Marfan Foundation – just click here to be redirected.