Green screen, working with kids, rubber overalls—Willem Dafoe embraces it all
Image: Graphic: Allison Corr Film Features Random Roles
The actor: With so many hard-working character actors out there plugging away for years and precious little recognition, why did The A.V. Club go back and do a second Random Roles interview with Willem Dafoe? Because he’s Willem Dafoe, that’s why.
But in all seriousness, Dafoe—who sat down for his first Random Roles interview with The A.V. Club in 2012—has had a hell of a decade. He’s been nominated for two Oscars, one for The Florida Project (2017) and one for At Eternity’s Gate (2018). He continued to develop his working relationship with directors Wes Anderson and Lars Von Trier, while forging new ones with up-and-coming directors like Florida Project’s Sean Baker and The Lighthouse’s Robert Eggers.
But while Dafoe is proud of his work in all of these films, My Hindu Friend (2015) might be the work from this decade that’s closest to his heart. In the film, Dafoe plays a character based on the film’s co-writer and director, Hector Babenco, the Brazilian filmmaker probably best known in the U.S. for his 1985 film Kiss Of The Spider Woman. Diego (Dafoe) is a director who’s dying of cancer and who forges a touching friendship with an Indian boy he meets on a cancer ward, a story that becomes even sadder when you realize that Babenco was himself dying of cancer during production, and died just a few months after the film’s release in Brazil. Nearly four years later, My Hindu Friend hit American theaters in late January, and is available for digital rental and purchase on YouTube, Amazon Prime, and Google Play.
My Hindu Friend (2015)— “Diego”
The A.V. Club: Working on this film must have been a very intense experience, both physically and emotionally.
Willem Dafoe: Sure, just in the fact that [I was playing] someone who’s been through a lot. And [Babenco] had a terrific stake in making this film because, although it is part fiction, it does draw a lot on autobiography. So the stakes were very high. And there is a period of the film where he’s quite sick, so I had to lose weight. I had to shave my head, and I spent a lot of time in the hospital. And of course, as we’re doing this, I was doing a lot of the same things that Hector went through, so they were very emotionally loaded. Plus, I’m shooting in his house, with his wife playing the love interest. So it was quite intense.
AVC: Were you acquainted with Hector before you started this project?
WD: I knew his movies very well. I met him—I remember this very well, cause he was a big person with a big personality, and charismatic—I remember meeting him at the Venice film festival when I was there with Last Temptation Of Christ. We hung out together, and we got along, and we kept in touch some. And then I lost track of him, not knowing exactly why. In retrospect, I know he was very sick for a while.
And when he came back, we talked about me doing a film called Foolish Heart. I think it was difficult to set up, because his health was uncertain, so he ended up doing it in Portuguese on a much more modest scale. So, we had tried to work together. And then I was in Sao Paolo with a theater piece of Robert Wilson’s. Hector knew I was there, so we met, and he showed me the script for Hindu Friend. He said, “I’d love for you to do this.” So it was quite direct. He said, “when can you do it?” And I told him when, and then we were off to the races.
AVC: I’m curious: You said Hector’s wife played your love interest in the film. What was that experience like? Did it help you get into character to be working with the real people?
WD: You’re dealing with so much. We were shooting at his house, so with everything we were doing—the ghosts of those original actions are still in the house, and you’re accessing them. While you are inventing some things, [the reality] is very present. And you have him always speaking in your ear, telling you what he went through. And you’re taking that on, trying to inhabit that state. When you’re confronting death and when you’re spending time in the hospital and you’re around hospital culture all the time, you can’t help but personalize that. It’s so easy to imagine yourself in that position.
Streets Of Fire (1984)— “Raven Shaddock”
AVC: You wear a pair of rubber rubber overalls in this movie…
WD: Designed by Giorgio Armani, yup.
AVC: It just seems very uncomfortable inside a pair of rubber overalls.
WD: They looked good. I’m an actor, so if I’m looking good, I’m feeling good. What can I say?
That was pretty much the first studio film I ever made. Walter Hill said when he wrote the script, he made a list of all the things he loved to see when he was young going to the movies, and he tried to do all those things in the story. And he basically did. So it was a film made with a lot of love,.
I think it was ahead of its time, and it’s now being appreciated in retrospect. And when I run into people who are Streets Of Fire fans—man, they’re hardcore. So it’s a movie that lives well in my memory. It’s fun when you’re playing the head of a motorcycle gang and your entourage is 50 guys on Harley-Davidsons. That’s a pretty extreme—and pretty fun!—fantasy experience.
AVC: Your first studio movie, and you have all these guys in an alley behind you. That’s pretty cool.
WD: I had a good head of hair, too.
AVC: You mentioned that Walter Hill had this list—did you connect with that? Since you guys are from different generations.
WD: It is a different generation. But it was more that he’s a great cinephile. He was steeped in cinema culture, and particularly at that point, I was more of a guy from the theater. My knowledge of cinema was very poor. So it’s only in retrospect that I appreciate some of the references, and some of the stuff that was consciously, or maybe even unconsciously, quoting from classic films.
The Florida Project (2017)—“Bobby”
AVC: Did you film this one after you filmed My Hindu Friend?
WD: I filmed it after. Hector died in 2016, and we finished the year before. That’s long before The Florida Project.
AVC: So did that experience give you a precedent for working with non-professional actors? There are quite a few of those in this movie.
WD: It depends on what kind of film you’re making. Sometimes it’s very enjoyable [to work with non-professionals]. If they’re from the world, and they’re doing things that they know how to do, then it’s not a problem. With performers that aren’t usually actors—yes, they have limitations. They aren’t skilled at repeating things, and sometimes they can’t exactly drive a scene. They may need special kind of environment on the set to perform well.
But they have such a clean sense of play. And there’s this realism to having no ego or identity as an actor, so they can be very free. And if they’re inhabiting something that’s a fantasy for them, particularly with the children, they can be very pure in that performing. So I don’t mind [working with non-professionals] at all.
And on any movie, since there’s not a uniform training for actors or a uniform career track for acting in movies in the States, you’re always dealing with people with a wide range of experience. Some people are very trained, and some people are just naturals who are really good in front of the camera. Some are experienced theater actors, some are models… it’s a mixed bag. So every time you do a movie, you have to deal with what’s there.
And I kind of enjoy that, because you’ll always find new ways to perform and new ways to approach things. That’s the way to keep your performing alive, rather than have your process harden into a very strong sense of rules or conditions. Because those are the things that I think really weigh down an actor, when they start to create “I don’t do that”s or “I don’t like that”s. You gotta be flexible. And I think sometimes working with a wide range of people and a wide range of experience really helps you with a certain kind of flexibility and tolerance. And curiosity.
AVC: Well, all those words apply to your performance in that film. In your interactions with Brooklynn Prince and all the other kids—they’ll ride by on their bikes, and you’re exasperated, and it just feels like a real moment, you know?
WD: Sean Baker is very good at creating an atmosphere, to make the kids very relaxed. And also we were shooting in a real place, so the people there really taught us how to behave in that world. I wasn’t trying to be an actor as much as I was trying to be a good manager of that hotel, basically.
Spider-Man (2002)— “Norman Osborn/Green Goblin”
AVC: The superhero film culture was different in 2002. It wasn’t as all-encompassing as it is now.
WD: It was. That was one of the things that was really fun about it. For Sam Raimi, it was a personal film.
Also, some of the effects weren’t as developed then, even as much as they were in subsequent Spider-Man movies. So I enjoyed it, because there was a lot of kind of classical wire work and flying around. People were trying to figure it out, you know? And there’s a passion that comes from that kind of problem solving. So that was really a fun experience. The cast was good; it was cast very well, and Sam was really fun to work with. I think it’s a good movie. It effortlessly goes back and forth between drama and comedy, you know? It doesn’t point to itself too much. It’s not kitsch, but it has a good sense of humor about itself.
Aquaman (2018)—“Vulko”
AVC: You mentioned that the technology was changing movie over movie; was there anything in particular that changed for you between movies? As in, you did wire work for one film, and then in the sequel it was CGI?
WD: Not specifically. The CGI gets more sophisticated every time. On the first Spider-Man, it was strictly practical. But by the time I got to Aquaman, while there was wire work on that, there were these new innovations. Now you can basically key in on the monitor and see the mock-ups for the sets, so rather than just the straight green screen, you can go to the monitors [while you’re shooting] and see what it’s going to look like. We didn’t have that kind of sophistication with Spider-Man—at least, I wasn’t privy to it.
AVC: I always wonder that aspect of it. I did an interview with Samuel L. Jackson where we talked about The Phantom Menace, and he said you really have to act, because you’re in front of a green screen looking at a tennis ball. He said you really have to put yourself in the moment.
WD: Yup. I think with green screen, if you embrace it rather than complaining about it, it can be a lot of fun. Because it’s up to you. It’s all in you. It’s all in your imagination, because you have to create these things in your head.
The Lighthouse (2019)—“Thomas Wake”
AVC: Your dialogue in this film is very stylized. Was it more difficult to deliver that style of dialogue versus something more naturalistic, or is that where your theater training kicks in?
WD: It’s where the theater training kicks in, and I loved it. It’s very evocative. You do have to practice [that style of dialogue]. It’s got a music and a rhythm that is part of understanding the sense of it. The big trick, besides finding the music and the rhythm, is that it still has to feel like natural dialogue. Because the style of the movie—although it’s got elevated language, and even though some of the behavior is quite extreme, it’s a naturalistic movie.
I really enjoyed it, because you can be far more articulate when the language is so specific and when the images are so juicy. So, emotionally, it plays on you much more than more prosaic or more conversational dialogue. That was one of the great pleasures of working on this film. And I think Robert Eggers and his brother both have a great facility for writing that type of dialogue. I mean, it’s quite amazing.
AVC: How long were you out in this remote location? Were you being taken on a boat into the set every day?
WD: No, no, it was a peninsula. It’s made to look like an island, but there was this little spit of rocky peninsula that we built the lighthouse on. And I was staying in the fisherman’s cottage, which was quite close to the set. So it wasn’t a big deal getting to the set every day. We did, I think, 35 days of shooting—there was some studio work in Halifax, but the majority of it was on location.
AVC: Staying in the fisherman’s cottage must have been helpful for immersive purposes.
WD: Well, you wake up every morning and the first thing you do is you check the weather. You look out and you start the fire to get the place warm. It definitely puts you in the state of mind of someone that’s living in nature and has an intimate relationship with the weather, which certainly is a huge character in the movie.
AVC: You mentioned just before that you, you know, embrace green screen—
WD: I try to embrace everything. [Laughs.] If I’m in a movie with green screen, I’m gonna love it. That’s the nature of being a performer: You see what’s there, and you use it the best you can. That’s all.
AVC: I was just wondering if it was helpful to be in an immersive environment, or if it was not really necessary. You know what I mean?
WD: No, of course it’s helpful. It’s fun. Sometimes you’ll have a director that really creates a specific world—whether it’s David Lynch, or whether it’s Wes Anderson, or whether it’s Robert Eggers—and when you enter that world, you’ll know exactly what has to happen. All your energy doesn’t go into sussing it out and figuring out strategy. All your energy goes into being present, and the actions that you do. And what you have to do becomes very, very clear.
The heart and pleasure [of performing] is in being present in a very full way, receiving what’s there, and letting it have the capacity to surprise you. If you’re trying too hard to figure out the world, I don’t think you’re as available, because you’re shepherding the world too much, you know?
Wild At Heart (1990)— “Bobby Peru”
AVC: Bobby Peru scared me so bad. It’s a very unnerving performance. What was it like shooting this role, with the teeth and everything?
WD: It was beautiful. It was beautifully written, and David Lynch is fun to be around, and Laura [Dern] and Nic [Cage] were fun to perform with. Lynch creates a very specific world, and I had great externals there as far as a real performer’s mask. As you said, I had the teeth, and I had a very specific look and way of speaking. The language was very beautiful.
He’s bad without apology, which is always nice because there’s always a temptation to kind of tip your hand and, you know, justify why a character is bad, or find the psychology. There’s no psychology there. That guy, you know exactly what he wants. And operates on a level that’s almost superhuman, because his appetites are not colored by any social considerations. He’s an interesting character because he’s such a force of nature. And then, of course, you’ve got the scene where he seduces Laura Dern. When she submits to him, he basically turns it into a joke, exposing the fact that he’s not really interested in the seduction, just the power game.
AVC: You called Bobby Peru a force of nature… from what I know about Lynch’s process, it’s very intuitive. So I imagine that’s all of a piece for him?
WD: Yeah. And, as you said before, fitting in with what you were talking about, he makes you a very complete world. It’s quite clear. That was a long time ago. I’m sure he’s changed a lot. But at that point—for example, with my costume, there was no discussion. It was, “here’s your costume.” It was practically handed to me on a on a hanger. He was very clear about [what he wanted], yeah.
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004)—“Klaus Daimler”
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)—“Rat”
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)—“Jopling”
The French Dispatch (2020)
AVC: Speaking of directors who create a specific world, you’ve worked with Wes Anderson several times now.
WD: I’m in the new one as well.
AVC: What keeps you coming back?
WD: I like his movies. He gives me fun things to do, and it’s always fun to work with him.
AVC: What kind of atmosphere is there on set? Anderson’s got this reputation for being particular, I think because of the precise composition of his films.
WD: That’s true. But he also makes it a good life adventure. It’s a very social environment, because he tends to get very strong casts to hang out together. Specifically with The Grand Budapest Hotel, we were all staying at the same hotel every night in the spirit of the Grand Budapest Hotel. We’d have dinner together, people would come and go.
He makes a world. He makes a world within the world. And I think actors really respond to that. It creates a camaraderie where everybody is patient, and everybody works very hard. Yes, he’s demanding, but everybody’s there for that world and they’re there for Wes. So it’s very clear. So yeah, there’s a camaraderie that he creates. He’s demanding, but he’s a very sweet person who’s very committed to what he’s doing. So everybody respects that by being patient with his very specific instructions, and sometimes going for very many takes.
AVC: What’s very many? Dozens?
WD: Oh yeah. Well, I’m used to working on movies where you get maybe two takes, so—you know.
AVC: Oh, wow. No pressure there, huh?
WD: That’s actually not a bad way to work sometimes.
AVC: Why?
WD: Because you don’t wait. You put it out there. And I’m used to that, because in the theater, I was used to rehearsal that afternoon, and trying new stuff most every night. It’s always nice to have that little sense of flying by the seat of your pants.
Murder On The Orient Express (2017)—“Gerhard Hardman”
AVC: How about another big ensemble piece, Kenneth Branagh’s Murder On The Orient Express? What was that experience like? Did it have that communal aspect you were talking about?
WD: It had a little bit of that. They were very, very, very, very different experiences, but similar in the respect that everybody was there full-time. It’s an ensemble, so nobody has to do any super heavy lifting. [Branagh’s] got the heavy lifting. But everybody has to be around all the time, because they’re part of the world. So we have these great actors that are used to headlining movies basically being part of the ensemble. But, I think largely because a lot of them are also English actors who are used to the theater, they’re also used to doing all kinds and sizes of roles. They’re used to sitting around. [Laughs.] It was beautiful.
You’d have to be around, everybody would have to be around, because they didn’t make any special [accommodations]. They didn’t shoot people out too much. Kenneth would a little bit, so he could direct. Sometimes he’d shoot his side and then we’d shoot complementary shots for him, so he could be in it and watch. But generally speaking, everybody was there every day, and it was kind of sweet. Everybody would come in in the morning, and there was a real good feeling to it. You’d get on that train, and you’d start to work. And yeah, there was a lot of hanging out, but everybody enjoyed it because also you had a lot of beautiful, experienced theater people. There was always a good humor, and a lot of swapped stories.
At Eternity’s Gate (2018)—“Vincent Van Gogh”
AVC: Playing Vincent Van Gogh, the character was much younger than you were when you were playing the role. Did that factor into your characterization at all?
WD: I guess nobody gave you the bulletin, huh?
AVC: I guess not—what do you mean?
WD: Ah, you didn’t get the memo! I think that thing about age is bullshit. Yeah, Van Gogh was 37 years old when he died, but he was not a young man, first of all. Mortality in the time he died was different, their 40 was our 75.
AVC: You know, that’s a great point.
WD: This was not a young man. And he had a lot of physical problems. He was an alcoholic, and he was pretty beat up. So I may be older than him by numbers, but I never gave age a single thought. Plus, you have to think about this: He was a man that really lived life. A 37-year-old man now is not having the same kind of experience.
I don’t know. I never gave a thought, and I found it piddly and beside the point when people would discuss that issue. Watch the movie—nobody should be thinking about age. I think it’s a beautiful movie. And if you’re thinking about that, you’re a moron, what can I say? Not you personally, of course.
AVC: [Laughs.] I know, I know. I know what you mean.
WD: Whoever even started that idea lacks imagination.
AVC: So what were you thinking of, then? What was your focus for the character?
WD: Primarily, it’s a movie about painting. And his letters. His letters are very intimate, and very beautiful. We used his word, I speak some of his words in the film. That was a lot. I was in the place where he was, and I was looking at the things he was looking at. But above all, I’d say I concentrated on the painting. It was a wonderful experience, because I was very full and engaged.
87 Comments
Clearly his greatest role, as the Moorish Idol fish, Gill. I would have like to have learned more about how given the fish is from Africa how he navigated the potential criticism of cultural appropriation, and more importantly, how he learned to breathe underwater.
Well I think if you watch the film and that’s what you’re thinking of, you’re a moron. I mean not you personally…of course.
sommmmebody doesn’t get jokes
You?
Hereby petitioning for “If you’re thinking about that, you’re a moron” to join the classic all-purpose dismissals culled from AV Club interviews, along with Dean Ween’s “Well, you’re a dick!” and of course Udo Kier’s immortal “I cannot answer you, because it’s totally unknown to me what you just asked me, and also very boring.”
Seconded. Right next to Sammy Hagar, “Now you have fucked up, Steve (Hyden)“https://music.avclub.com/sammy-hagar-1798224982
Oh man, how did I forget this existed? Hyden needs to be made an honorary member of Chickenfoot for rolling with Hagar’s spaciness so well:AVC: You write in your book about having a dream where “two intelligent creatures” made a wireless connection with your brain. Soon after that, you wandered into an abandoned chicken coop in your backyard and found a book on numerology in a “dirty, fucked-up trunk.” That’s pretty weird, man.SH: When I woke up from that dream, brother, I was like, “Okay, I’ve got to know what that was, what happened.” That was not an average dream. I’ve had some dreams in my days, but not like that. It was way too vivid. Looking back, the reason that dream makes more sense today than it did then is, we are in a digital world. Back then, it was an analog world. Everything was digital in the dream. It was a download/upload situation, whatever it was. They had a code—it was like 9-11-7-14-3, and, boom, it was over. They had a combination, and it was a friggin’ digital combination that had no significance to, you know, the numbers we know even today. I couldn’t tell you what it was, but at the time I knew what it meant, which is weird. Having a dream like that is just not normal. Everybody has weird dreams, but a usual weird dream is, okay, so your mom’s driving a car and she’s a dog. And then you look in your backseat and your brother is, like, a mouse sitting up there, eating a piece of cheese.
Man, I would pay to hear Udo Kier deliver that line.
I’m not going to click to see if it still works, god knows what Kinja ghosts could be in there, but: https://news.avclub.com/youre-welcome-udo-kier-fans-1798223442
If you’re thinking about that, you’re a moronThe A.V. Club
Ryan Seacrest: “Next week, on Moorish Idol!”
I would assume, based on his subsequent casting in Aquaman, that “Can breathe underwater” is just one of the basic skills he boasts in his acting repertoire.
but was the fish from ON Africa or NEXT TO Africa even if swimming above the same continental shelf, because the latter is merely approximation appropriation
Shadow of the Vampire. yes. yes.
Ya know, he just comes across as someone I would want to be around. Pretty positive and seems pretty earnest.
One of my favorite roles of his.
Sporting the full Goose / Viper ‘stache. Very nice.
He did a great job in that movie, which for the most part I didn’t like.
The whole idea of that movie is so strange. To have a Top Gun clone called Uncles, about a trio of uncles who learn to be fighter pilots as a way to impress their nieces and nephews, and wind up winning the first Gulf War almost by accident, is an outlandish concept. And yet a savvy one too – Uncles is the favorite film of probably 70% of the world’s uncles, so it lives on.
If they remade that movie now they’d probably ruin it and cast someone like Tom Holland, who’s clearly never uncled a day in his life!
You hit the nail on the head. He wouldn’t know those things only an uncle knows – first day of shooting, I’ll bet he strides out onto the carrier deck and immediately gets sucked into the jet intake.
Nothing about whether he was into that whole Yale thing?
He’s awesome.
the worm has turned
He’s so awesome, I don’t know where to begin! Katie, great interview. There’s just SO many roles and I know you get limited time so great job on spreading them out like you did. If you ever get a part II with him, I’d love to hear his experiences on stuff like Platoon, Susan Sarandon and just a ton more. He’s got to have stories for years!
And my god is she right about Bobby Peru. He may be the most purely vile character I ever recall seeing on film. Every second he was with Sailor and Lula you just knew something terrible was about to happen. His death scene it etched in my brain.
Oh, fully agree! You take a guy who can legit look creepy and you embellish it AND put it in a David Lynch film…you’re gonna get nightmare material. And his death scene is an all time classic.
The look on his face leering at Lula makes my skin crawl.
*sees headline with ‘Willem Dafoe,’ ‘rubber overalls’* FUCK YES RANDOM ROLES COVERING STREETS OF FIRE!Awesome interview! It was very nice of him to clarify that you are not a moron, but also good on him for being annoyed by that. And his comments about being present in different situations were cool — on the one hand you have the heightened stuff like Bobby Peru (or Raven, who doesn’t say a lot but is throwing off all kinds of weird dominating energy in those overalls) and then you have his incredible performance in The Florida Project. When he talks about just trying to be the manager, that’s exactly how it came across, the scene where he gets rid of that creeper is full of anger but it’s not about displaying that in an ostentatious and righteous way, it’s about getting this guy gone. It’s very real, not a Movie Moment.
It is really cool to hear an actor talk about approaching different roles with different methods, i.e. more theatrically or more naturalistically as the role/project requires.
He was very nice about the Van Gogh question. You obviously can’t hear it on the page, but his tone was more “let me go off on this thing for a minute” than “you’re a moron and I’m mad you asked me this.”
Yeah – I didn’t get that at all from his reply. He seems pretty much like you expect him to be – cool. I loved the “…lacks imagination” line.
Actually, I’m not sure it’s true about the “life expectancy”. When you see life expectancy data, it’s heavily skewed by infant and child mortality, so to see “how old ‘40′ was”, you really need to look at life expectancy at about age 15, rather than overall.Definitely people wore their mileage more openly back then. Just looking at old family photo albums, I’d have guessed people were older than they chronologically were. But I think “40″ back in the 1800s actuarially works out to more like “50-55″ now, rather than 75.
I think you also have to take into account quality of life, and healthiness. In that time Polio was still rocking folks, hard living factory jobs put people out of commission by their 40’s, but they’d been working since they were 8. Everybody smoked and drank, and the treatment of illness was spotty at best, though still leagues better than n their grandparents time. It’s a whole different paradigm compared to today, and it’s less about when they died, and more about when did they start breaking down in a significant way.
That’s what I was thinking. Yes a lot of people died young because of childbirth/infant mortality and sicknesses that we can now cure easier, but that doesn’t always mean that people in their 30s had more aged bodies than we do now. From the very little I know, Van Gogh was from a fairly well-off family and probably wasn’t doing a ton of hard labor. But I do still get his point. They didn’t have estheticians or nutritionists or whatever so they probably do look older based on Hollywood standards now. I don’t know that they look any older than normal people these days who still do manual labor or have poor nutrition
WDF: “Anyone who thinks like that is a moron!”Me as interviewer: *pees pants*WDF: “Not you, of course.”
It was nice since it’s better to be polite and nice when you’re full of shit than to be a jerk. Cool to know the rubber overalls were Armani though.
For some reason i always hated him as an actor until i hit my 20’s.
THANK YOU FOR THIS. Dafoe is among my top 3 favorite actors (at worst). I think he’s smart, generous, and always magnetic. Despite the respect he’s been given throughout the decades, I still see him as underrated.
Like a lot of people I was introduced to him via Platoon, and have been astonished at his versatility ever since. I don’t think I’ve seen a bad performance from the man.
I saw Platoon pretty young, and I think I saw Dafoe for years as just that funny-lookin’ guy who’s everywhere. At some point, I realized that he just enriches the movies he appears in, very consistently. He’s a very familiar face, but somehow I find him always believable. He also seems to be a real delight.
He could definitely have gone a different way with that distinctive craggy look (i.e. career bad guy), but his ability to radiate charisma despite the intense features is impressive.
Charisma and, when he wants to, warmth — that’s what makes him so great in The Florida Project.
Boondock sticks out in my mind.
How did I have to dig deep through all the comments and then into the greys before seeing this movie mentioned at all? THERE WAS A FIREFIGHT!
This was a fucking bomb dropping on beaver cleaverville
I feel real bad he had to work with that Julian Schnabel dweeb, as Schnabel is a complete non-artist, just like Lance Bangs.
I can’t recall which interview this was, but when asked what his Plan B was if the acting thing didn’t work out, Dafoe’s response was, “Plan B? I didn’t have a Plan A!” My favorite roles of his are where he plays normal guys, like being Nick Nolte’s brother in Affliction. Talk about range… He can do anything.
I think I heard that when he was working with the Wooster Group he was also a carpenter, so he and Harrison Ford could have started a business!
Why did you spill your beans, Willem?
Why did you spill your beans?
My Hindu Friend sounds like it’ll leave me bawling at the end of it.I’m still hoping one day for a wacky comedy starring Willem Dafoe and Stephnie Weir as rival siblings trying to take control of mother Betty White’s corporation:
His performance in “Wild at Heart” wow. Like Defoe has been in so many memorable roles, but that one is probably top three in terms of standing out and sticking in my head. Like he goes way past the acceptable levels of crazy/scary on my Michael Shannon-psychometer.
Speaking of psychos, i really enjoyed him in ‘American Psycho” even though his role was rather small it was incredible. His chemistry with Bale is something I’d want to explore more.
A friend of mine noted that Defoe convincingly played Jesus and the devil in the same year. (88/90, but, you know)
His energy is so weird (in a good way) in ‘American Psycho’. There are moments where I expect him to tell Patrick Bateman that he’s a serial killer too and they should go out slaying together.
Sorry Hannibal and Will Graham, there’s a new couple of Murder-Husbands in town! They should all go out to dinner at Dorsica and plan murders. If Bateman can’t get them in, then Hannibal definitely can.
Plus, with a partner in tow, Bateman can finally get other stuff done while Kimball returns the video tapes.
Yeah I’m sure the new crew can help oversee all those mergers and acquisitions that Bateman has been looking into.
Willem Dafoe is a guy who makes you want to be a director so you can direct someone like him. Fascinating dude.
Once I was crossing the street at Broadway and Houston, I looked up at the crosswalk signal and then down and it was Willem Dafoe, doing the same thing, he saw me see him, clear that I recognized him, and he gave that devilish smile :DOn acting with tennis balls: Ian McKellen made the point that “there’s a giant, it’s really tall, taller, now it’s chasing you!” is basically what you do every day in theater. Some productions have working ovens and kitchen sinks, some have a couch that’s supposed to be a giant flying pig (peer gynt). The background Dafoe comes from at the Wooster Group (as opposed to the work he has got, which is, you know, in everything) was very rough and ready experimental, with multimedia overlays, people performing in languages they don’t speak, stepping in and out of character, then doing photorealistic reenactments sometimes in front of the video you are reenacting, some of the actors are trained and some of them used to be the theater’s maintenance guy…you can see how that would prepare you for everything and how it helps him to fit into pretty much everything. I really would like to see Dafoe do Shakespeare. The obvious choice is Iago or Richard III or any of a million supporting roles of course, but I’d like to see his Prospero, the Duke in Measure for Measure, Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, or Timon of Athens if it was written better :P,
Every time someone says Dafoe’s name, I immediately go to the image of first thing I ever saw him in. That’s right. The Streets of Fire rubber overalls and greaser hair.
Great interview. Next time, can you ask him about Last Temptation though?
What, no Antichrist question? I demand a redo 😀
$85/hr provide by Google, I am making a good salary from home $6580-$7065/week , which is amazing, under a year ago I was jobless in a horrible economy. I thank God every day I was blessed with these instructions and now it’s my duty to pay it forward and share it with Everyone.COPY HERE☛☛☛ http://www.foxnews44.com
Dafoe is Daman. Bobby Peru left a scar on my psyche. I’ll blame/commend both Willem and Lynch but maaaaan…talk about creepy.
Great interview. I always love seeing Dafoe in things.However…“Mortality in the time he died was different, their 40 was our 75.”No. People who lived past childhood had a life expectancy in the 60+ range. And even people who died in middle age of what are now easily preventable causes still didn’t age faster. Someone who was 40 in 1890 had lived just as much life (you know, 40 years of it) as someone who’s 40 in 2020.This isn’t to say that the age thing necessarily had to have been a factor for the movie or his performance, but I think it’s equally nonsensical to say, as Dafoe does, that someone is a moron or lacking in imagination to even ask the question. An extra 25 years of life can give you a lot of experience and perspective; seeing a 60-year-old acting like he only has the emotional and experiential maturity of a 30-year-old has the potential to be disconcerting.
Well, except that people didn’t wear sunscreen or things like that, so they would look older than a modern person of the same age.
People did a lot more physical labor in 1890, which was both a positive and negative on their longevity / condition.
I agree, but if the question is just who looks older, someone who spends time outdoors without sunscreen has a much more weathered look.
People back then didn’t need sunscreen. They had an ozone layer.
People had to labor harder, very hard, and “good nutrition” was only a consideration for the wealthy and bourgeoisie. Medical treatment was a luxury. Women were expected to marry and to bear children until they no longer could. If a person attained the age of 40 their bodies were beaten up. Dafoe is correct: anyone who doesn’t get that is a moron.
Good nutrition wasn’t even necessarily good nutrition! Browse a medieval cookbook or two, and the things the nobility ate and the things they did to it in order to signify scarcity and luxury will make day-old pottage seem like back-to-basics real food. Sugar was a spice, for god sake.
Indeed. Many people like to use ye olde diet ‘theory’ to convince us that the ‘peasantry’ ate a healthier diet than we do – The Ploughman’s Lunch (a complete simulacrum, lol). NOT eating was more the tragic fashion, sadly. And, again, the physical labor was grueling, unrelenting. If an injury happened on the job, no more job and likely a future full of disability and pain. We have the old daguerreotypes (and early photos) of our pioneer ancestors and, yes, they all looked 10-15 years older than their biological ages. I appreciate your point: “[Quality of life] all conspired against you enjoying a single second of your life without worry. “
For real. Just because peasant fare was necessarily carb and calorie-dense does not mean it was flavourful, nutritious, or even artfully rustic. And “beer for breakfast” wasn’t badass or enjoyable, it was just that the water might kill you.
well, to be fair, there’s a lot more years between medieval times and van gogh than between van gogh and us in the early 21st century. their understanding of nutrition wasn’t *that* different then than ours is now. it’s just that van gogh was frequently so poor all he could afford to eat for days at a time was coffee and a loaf of bread. that will age anyone pretty quickly. but on dafoe’s point, i totally agree with him. dafoe was performing van gogh at the age that van gogh probably FELT like, after decades of hard living. and i think he was very well cast in that role.
Well he was poor/a hard liver later in life but he was from a pretty well off family so it’s not like he grew up doing heavy labor or anything. His formative years seemed pretty ok.
when he was younger, yes, he grew up in a well-off family, but from the time he was out on his own as a teenager he routinely lived among the poorest of the poor and voluntarily lived like they did to understand their plight. he crawled into mines with miners, he lived in the worst parts of cities, and borrowed money from his family on and off for the rest of his life just to get by. the only time i think he was honestly better about his diet and physical health was a brief time while in Paris, and even then he quickly became an alcoholic due to hanging out with all the artistic up-and-comers there. all that has to take a toll on a body.
I was hoping someone would mention this. Average life expectancy was low because child mortality brought that average way, way down. It’s just not a useful metric.Quality of life, on the other hand, was a total bummer. For most, the state of Ye Olde medicine, dental care, hygiene, diet and labour all conspired against you enjoying a single second of your life without worry.
People confuse what median age means all the time. When they say “the median age” people lived was 35 in the 1600’s or whatever, that did not mean people died at 35. That means a lot of people died from illness, viruses or whatever when they were young and it AVERAGES out to 35. If you survived your teens and did not get killed in some war, you lived to be old just like anyone now.
Dafoe spent a few months living in my city while he was shooting Aquaman a few years back.He attended a few AFL (Australian football) games and from people I know who were working the events, they couldn’t have spoken more highly of him. Just a charming, kind and wonderful person to deal with.
Walter Hill said when he wrote the script, he made a list of all the
things he loved to see when he was young going to the movies, and he
tried to do all those things in the story
And “rubber overalls” was clearly prominent on that list.
This was outstanding, Katie. I liked that you pressed him to follow up on some things. That “I guess nobody gave you the bulletin, huh?” read like a genuine “OH SHIT” moment, even if it was just something he was just waiting to go off about. It was tough to not imagine him saying that in the same tone he’d say something right after ripping duct tape off Harrison Ford’s face.
What a beautiful, thorough interview. The best I have read in a while, it feels /reads so good, chilled, and laid back. Makes me wish I was there in front row like in the Actor’s Studio.
Man, “Triumph of the Spirit” has really been erased from existence.
I love his absolute sincerity in this scene.
I’m posting before I read, to say that I’m going to be very angry if Fishing With John doesn’t come up for a second time!“The fishermen awake, covered in sores and boners.”
“anyone who think that is a moron..not you personally, of course”Means..oops, I just accidentally called you a moron