Nancy Thompson is the teenager targeted by Freddy Krueger in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Released in 1984, the film was written and directed by Wes Craven. Heather Langenkamp played Nancy, who discovers that Freddy can attack teenagers in their dreams. Because injuries suffered in dreams carry over into waking life, Nancy must find a way to confront him without simply falling asleep.
Nancy is the daughter of police officer Donald Thompson, whose earlier actions are connected to Freddy’s history. The film’s supernatural premise made dreams themselves a source of danger and helped distinguish the franchise from more conventional masked-killer slashers.
The surname is sometimes confused with the names of later protagonists, including Kristen Parker in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 and Alice Johnson in later sequels. Nancy Thompson is specifically the lead survivor of the 1984 original.