Dacre Montgomery Says Living with OCD Inspired His “Faces of Death” Villain: Here's How (Exclusive)

The actor stars as mask-wearing murderer in the newly-released horror film

NEED TO KNOW

• Dacre Montgomery says OCD was the most “relatable” aspect of his Faces of Death villain
• “That’s just definitely my thing. I live with that and I manage it,” the actor tells PEOPLE
• Faces of Death — which also stars Charli xcx, Josie Totah, Aaron Holliday and Jermaine Fowler — is in theaters now

Warning: Spoilers for Faces of Death.

For Dacre Montgomery’s latest role, in which he portrays a “methodical” murderer, OCD plays a central role. It’s also what he found most relatable about the character.

The Australian actor, 31, stars in the new horror movie as Arthur, who re-creates and uploads videos of the kills shown in the titular 1978 film (once widely believed to be an actual snuff film), opposite Barbie Ferreira, who plays a content moderator trying to thwart him.

Montgomery tells PEOPLE exclusively that what he found most relatable about his mask- and red contact-wearing killer was his experience with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) — which, per the Mayo Clinic, centers around "a pattern of unwanted thoughts and fears known as obsessions” that “lead you to do repetitive behaviors, also called compulsions.”

“Definitely what was relatable to me about Arthur was just, honestly, the OCD,” he says. “That's just definitely my thing. I live with that and I manage it.”

Elaborating on what he found relatable about the villain, the Stranger Things alum says, "There was a lot of that kind of fastidiousness and attention to detail that I put into all characters that I play, but he's so methodical.”

“From the time that you see him in the movie, he's halfway to enacting his plan and he's put a lot of thought into that,” Montgomery continues of Arthur. “And I think I could definitely relate not to working toward a murderous plot in my life — but definitely just the attention to detail thing, I felt that I connected with, yeah, huge.”

Faces of Death director Daniel Goldhaber, who also co-wrote the film with Isa Mazzei, says that this overlap in Montgomery and his on-screen killer helped to carve out the character’s final form.

Arthur would have looked very different had another actor played him, according to the filmmaker.

“I met with a handful of people for this movie,” Goldhaber tells PEOPLE. "As soon as I met with Dacre, I felt like it kind of just had to be him because everybody else … they approached this character they were talking about like somebody else, like this guy that they'd seen in the media. Dacre showed up and it was like, ‘Here's all the ways that I relate to Arthur personally.’ ”

“And I was like, ‘Whoa, okay, that's interesting.’ It's not that he's a psychopathic person or a serial killer — it's that he related to Arthur's OCD. He related to Arthur's sense of alienation. He related to a desire to connect through performance," he adds.

Elaborating on how Montgomery's real-life experience with the disorder informed his Faces character, Goldhaber explains, “It's like he has an obsession with the texture of clothing.”

For example, the director continues, “One of the first things he told me was that for 10 years, he was unable to sleep under the covers of his bed because if there was a bump in the fabric of the sheets, he was unable to fall asleep, so he only ever slept on top of the bedsheets.

“And that was what I heard when I was like, ‘Oh, you're gonna bring something so interesting to this role,' " adds Goldhaber.

“This was never an initial part of Arthur — the skinsuit, the latex, the stocking, the way he moves and dances and kind of rubs it on his body,” the filmmaker also tells PEOPLE. “That was all stuff that we found together in exploring this character.”

“And this idea that there's almost this kind of, like, sexual gratification element — not even to the murders, but to this kind of fabric that is holding his skin together while he's committing the murders — that was all stuff that kind of Dacre and I found together,” he continues. "And I think it creates such a rich and unique take on this kind of killer.”

Faces of Death — which also stars Charli xcx, Josie Totah, Aaron Holliday and Jermaine Fowler — is in theaters now.

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