Anna Daniels
We should tell you that, though he still works in showbiz, it’s unlikely you’d recognize Toby Froud’s face from any movie, because Labyrinth remains his lone screen credit as an actor. These days, the boy who would be the Goblin Prince is a grown man who helps bring big-screen dreams and nightmares to vivid life behind-the-scenes.
And his time on Labyrinth clearly made an impact, as Froud now spends his days creating ghoulish creatures of his very own. Indeed, since escaping Labyrinth, Toby Froud has become a special effects guru-slash-fabricator with a penchant for puppetry. He’s been working in that capacity since the early 2000s, earning credits on critically-adored films like The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Paranorman, Kubo and the Two Strings, and Missing Link.
Most recently, Froud supervised creature design on 2019’s Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Netflix’s boldly-stylized prequel to Henson’s own classic 1982 fantasy epic. Currently, he’s hard at work alongside Guillermo Del Toro for the director’s upcoming Netflix adaptation of Pinocchio.
It should come as no surprise that Toby ultimately became a puppet master himself, though, because that’s actually the family business for the Frouds. While Toby was being tossed about by David Bowie on Labyrinth, his parents, Brian Froud and Wendy Midener, were keeping busy with creature and costume design duties — roles that the couple also filled on both the original Dark Crystal and the Netflix series.
In Toby Froud’s own words per a 2016 Huffington Post interview, creature creation is a family legacy he’s happy to carry on. “I grew up in this world of fantasy and this world of goblins, and I sort of formed my life around the art of creating creatures and puppets and characters with my parents.”
Here’s hoping Froud returns to the Labyrinth fold — even if only behind-the-scenes — if they ever actually get that long-gestating sequel off the ground.
Written by: Looper
