His recent collaborations with director Abel Ferrara are . You can make a persona, corner a market, and make yourself almost a thing. I hear what you're saying, but I think you misjudge the guy. I like being the thing itself. Klaus Daimler married to Giada Colagrande (2005present), This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Willem-Dafoe, Turner Classic Movies - Biography of Willem Dafoe. I always try to find people that are burning to tell a story and then help them do it. It's one of those invented things. [141] Using motion-capture acting technology, Dafoe co-starred alongside Elliot Page in David Cage's video game Beyond: Two Souls (2013) as a paranormal activity researcher who acts as the surrogate-father-figure to a girl who possesses supernatural powers. It's like anything. You might be on "B" Squad, But you're the "B" Squad leader. Dafoe has done a lot more than steal scenes as Green Goblin in the "Spider-Man" movies. And then, as I get older, it transforms into something else.". - On top Hollywood actors. Steve Zissou Willem Dafoe, original name William J. Dafoe, (born July 22, 1955, Appleton, Wisconsin, U.S.), American actor known for his versatility and willingness to appear in controversial roles. [157] Dafoe starred in the late Brazilian director's Hctor Babenco's final film My Hindu Friend (2015) as a film director close to death who befriends a Hindu 8-year-old boy while hospitalized. [12] Within a year Dafoe was part of the company. : [149] Dafoe next starred alongside Matt Dillon as a detective in the crime thriller Bad Country, which critic Justin Chang dismissed as being "blandly constructed". - On preparation for the characters he plays. [108] Dafoe starred with Ryan Reynolds, Julia Roberts, and Emily Watson in the drama Fireflies in the Garden, which premiered at Berlinale in 2008 but was not released theatrically until 2011. Dafoe appears in Wes Anderson's ensemble period comedy The French Dispatch and Guillermo del Toro's neo-noir psychological thriller Nightmare Alley, which were both released in 2021, and Robert Eggers's historical epic The Northman, released in 2022. Willem Dafoe, original name William J. Dafoe, (born July 22, 1955, Appleton, Wisconsin, U.S.), American actor known for his versatility and willingness to appear in controversial roles. His character was described as a "diminutive version of Dick Cheney, with wire-rimmed glasses and a fringe of white hair" by The Times writer Caryn James. There's a funny perception that I play bad guys, but if you really know my movies, the big and small ones, the truth is often I play good guys. [49] Dafoe then co-starred in the spy thriller Clear and Present Danger (1994), an adaptation of the Tom Clancy novel of the name starring Harrison Ford as CIA operative Jack Ryan. Says he feels like he has missed out on more conventional roles because he's perceived as an eccentric actor in dark little films, kind of the boy-next-door type - if you lived next door to a mausoleum. Are we - are we safe in here? Klaus Daimler Because you're one of them - just by sheer proximity. : Who the shit is Kingsley Zissou? Do you still want to blow him up? [155] His performance in the film was generally well received by critics, including Peter Travers who felt he provided "ample compensation". Quite possibly has the most on-screen deaths of any mainstream actor. The critic Peter Brunette felt the cast's performances, especially Dafoe's, were unconvincing. Dec 21, 2021, 2:26 PM Jamie Foxx and Willem Dafoe return in "Spider-Man: No Way Home." Columbia Pictures, composite by Kirsten Acuna/Insider Jamie Foxx reprises his role of Electro in "Spider-Man: No Way Home." In an interview with Marvel.com, the actor said he had a special greeting for Willem Dafoe on set. But they're good guys that are flawed, good guys who are outside of society. Klaus Daimler William James Dafoe[2] was born on July 22, 1955, in Appleton, Wisconsin. Austin Burke (@theBurk3nator) December 15, 2021 No Way Bork (@BorkEternal) December 18, 2021 Dafoe returns to the role almost 20 years after his . Updates? Many of his antecedents resided in Canada. [143] In Scott Cooper's Out of the Furnace (2013), starring Christian Bale, Dafoe played the supporting role of a bookmaker running an illegal gambling operation. Willem mentioned that whoever dropped out did so to be in a project that ended up flopping, so maybe if we look at flops around that time and compare their actors to Wes' familiar roster we can find out who it is. He played Christ in Martin Scorseses The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)a film based on Nkos Kazantzkiss revisionist novel of Christs life and relationship with Mary Magdaleneand starred as an FBI agent investigating the disappearance of civil rights activists in the 1960s in Mississippi Burning (1988). Dafoe played the caretaker of a house that is inherited by the lover of its deceased owner, engaging in a sexual relationship with her. [92][93] Dafoe co-starred in XXX: State of the Union (2005), an action film sequel starring Ice Cube in which Dafoe played a US Secretary of Defense attempting a coup d'tat against the President of the United States. He's right-hand man to Bill. Now The New York Times does it, and it's the big story for people interested in arts and entertainment on Monday. Named one of "The 25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century" by the New York Times (November 25, 2020). What are we doing? That was over 17 years ago in 2004. Klaus Daimler I try to avoid anyone that pokes around-filmmaking should be an opportunity to make something that's very thrilling and, you know, exciting. [103] Dafoe starred as the owner of a strip club in Abel Ferrara's Go Go Tales (2007); Manohla Dargis praised his "twitchy, sympathetic performance" in the film. [34] As with The Last Temptation of Christ, the film was the subject of controversy, this time among African-American activists who criticized its fictionalization of events. [139] Later in 2012, Dafoe co-starred in the low-budget crime thriller Tomorrow You're Gone with Stephen Dorff and Michelle Monaghan. : [37] It was filmed on location at Auschwitz, the first major film to do so. Throughout the 1990s Dafoe continued to appear in roles that allowed him to explore moral ambiguity in characters. : Klaus Daimler Cross the line if you're going to quit. [113], Dafoe appeared in seven films in 2009, the first of which was in Lars von Trier's experimental film Antichrist. [115][116] Roger Ebert commended Dafoe's and Gainsbourg's performances as being "heroic and fearless". I never act. : The Lantern's Brett Price wrote that Dafoe was "on another level" in No Way Home and not having his mask made him even more intimidating than he was in the 2002 film. It's a way of getting attention. [1] Life and career [ edit] LeCompte was born and grew up in New Jersey. You're down with them. Dafoe played a paraplegic, wheelchair-using Vietnam veteran who befriends the film's subject Ron Kovic (played by Tom Cruise), another paraplegic veteran. [163] Also in 2016, Dafoe appeared in another Super Bowl commercial, this time for Snickers, recreating Marilyn Monroe's iconic white dress scene from the film The Seven Year Itch. [10] His surname, Dafoe, is the Anglicized version of the Swiss Thvou. [148] Dafoe worked with Wes Anderson for a third time with the comedy The Grand Budapest Hotel (also 2014), featuring as the henchman of Adrien Brody's character alongside an ensemble cast led by Ralph Fiennes. [118] Dafoe next had a small role in the French thriller Farewell as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and co-starred opposite Michael Shannon in Werner Herzog's My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, in which he played a detective attempting to figure out why a troubled man killed his own mother. There he met the actress and director Elizabeth LeCompte, who founded the deconstructionist theatre company the Wooster Group, with which Dafoe later performed. Dafoe was critically lauded for his performances in a number of controversial films released in the late 1980s. [95], With the avant-garde drama Manderlay in 2005, Dafoe began another actor-director collaboration, this time with Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier. [191] He now holds dual American and Italian citizenship. During an interview he explained that about half of the Dafoe family puts the emphasis on the first syllable of their surname, and the other half on the second. [29] Dafoe provided his voice to the documentary Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam (1987) and, in 1988, Dafoe starred in another film set during the Vietnam War, this time as Criminal Investigation Command Agent Buck McGriff in the action thriller Off Limits. The film received mostly negative reviews, although the performances were generally praised. [91] Also in 2004, Dafoe narrated the documentary Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate, chronicling the production of Heaven's Gate and co-starred as a neuropharmacologist in the direct-to-video thriller Control (2004) alongside Ray Liotta and Michelle Rodriguez. A balanced diet of different roles and different stories and movies - I think it's the way to stay healthy artistically and career wise. You said cross the line if. No! : But I'm getting too serious. 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Built sets and acted with experimental Milwaukee, Wisconsin group Theatre X, before moving to New York in 1977, where he worked with the Wooster Group at the Performing Garage. Spots all over it! Worked with an experimental theatre group in Milwaukee while at college. Where's Esteban? I'm an optimist. [98] Dafoe had a supporting role in Spike Lee's 2006 crime thriller Inside Man, playing a veteran captain of the NYPD Emergency Services Unit helping with a hostage negotiation during a bank heist on Wall Street. He made his film debut in Heaven's Gate (1980), but was fired during production. : [43] Dafoe had two lead roles in 1992. In 2021 he was featured in another Anderson film, The French Dispatch, playing a crooked accountant. In 2019, he had a supporting role in Edward Norton's period crime drama Motherless Brooklyn where he played powerful developer Moses Randolph's "beaten and broken" brother. [144] Dafoe next appeared in Lars von Trier's two-part erotic art film Nymphomaniac, his third and final film release of 2013. Is the second youngest of eight siblings. [camera zooms in on Steve's face - his eyes are dilated ridiculously large]. : Alamo drafthouse had a series of jackets and other apparel that was licensed from the films for a while, don't know where to find them though. Frequently cast by Paul Schrader and Wes Anderson. : [13], After attending Appleton East High School, Dafoe studied drama at the University of WisconsinMilwaukee,[14] but left after a year and a half to join the experimental theater company Theatre X in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, before moving to New York City in 1976. That adventurous spirit continues with upcoming films including Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch, Abel Ferrara's Siberia, and Paul Schrader's The Card Counter.Dafoe is one of the founding members of The Wooster Group, the New York based experimental theatre collective. [30][31] His second release of 1988 was Martin Scorsese's epic drama The Last Temptation of Christ, in which Dafoe portrayed Jesus. I said get your ass the hell off of my boat! Dafoe was an early member of experimental theater company The Wooster Group. : : [173] In the same year, he played a lighthouse keeper on a storm-swept island in Robert Eggers' psychological horror The Lighthouse opposite Robert Pattinson. Anne-Marie Sakowitz What's the deal? Willem Dafoe was born on July 22, 1955 in Appleton, Wisconsin as one of eight children of Muriel and William. As a 12-year old, he attended the 1967 NFL Championship Game between the Dallas Cowboys and Green Bay Packers, better known as the Ice Bowl, one of the most famous games in pro football history. Dafoe played a criminal who engages in a robbery with Cage's character before demonstrating his dark side. He's got hydrogen psychosis, the crazy-eye! DAFOE: I must admit you had me puzzled a lot of the time. Many years ago, it would have been vulgar to print box-office grosses in the paper. Klaus Daimler [109] Roger Ebert thought that Dafoe was "fearsome" in the role,[110] while Manohla Dargis felt he and Roberts were "awkwardly matched" as a married couple. You just frame them, give them circumstances, and that character will happen. Dafoes credits from 2019 included The Lighthouse, about two lighthouse keepers in the 1890s; Motherless Brooklyn, a crime drama adapted from the novel by Jonathan Lethem; and Togo, a Disney drama about the Great Race of Mercy, in which dog-sled teams were used to distribute medicine during a diphtheria epidemic in Alaska in 1925. [21], Following a brief appearance in the horror film The Hunger (1983), Dafoe again played the leader of a biker gang in Walter Hill's 1984 action film Streets of Fire. Steve! [2007]. The film was excoriated by a Variety reviewer as a "wannabe haunted house tale laced with silly sex scenes" and an "embarrassment". : [160] He next played the boss of Gerard Butler's character in the drama A Family Man and starred in Loris Graud's arthouse science fiction film Sculpt, which was only screened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for one person at a time. [72] Dafoe received numerous awards and nominations for his performance, including his second Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination. [99] Dafoe co-starred as the White House Chief of Staff in American Dreamz, a comedy satirizing both popular entertainment and American politics. Brother, Donald Dafoe, is an accomplished transplant surgeon. I'm gonna fight you, Steve. Named one of "The 25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century" by the New York Times (November 25, 2020). [40] In the same year, Dafoe co-starred in David Lynch's crime film Wild at Heart with Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern. In the drama Pavilion of Women, he played an American priest living in China who falls in love with a local married woman (played by the film's screenwriter Luo Yan) while giving her son a Western education. A founding member of The Wooster Group, she has directed that ensemble since its emergence in the late 1970s. Dafoe made his film debut in Heavens Gate (1980) and appeared in numerous other movies in the early 1980s. Early Life and Career Beginnings. Steve, what are you doing? [111] Dafoe co-starred as SS Nazi officer in Paul Schrader's Adam Resurrected (2008), which starred Jeff Goldblum as a concentration camp internee. [shouting] He is the recipient of various accolades, including the Volpi Cup for Best Actor, in addition to receiving nominations for four Academy Awards, four Screen Actors Guild Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and a BAFTA.He has frequently collaborated with filmmakers Paul Schrader, Abel Ferrara, Lars von Trier, Julian . 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