Four decades into his career, Willem Dafoe is more curious about his craft than ever.
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character actors whose name you have to look up.
His slender, angular face is unmistakable.
Im a little in denial!
Doing projects, the worlds got to fall away.
Its like falling in love.
You cant be with someone and still be all about your past relationships.
Whats the attraction to Eggerss work for you?
Youve also been inThe NorthmanandThe Lighthouse.He builds this world thats so complete, and hes so committed.
He believes we can express whats going on in this world by reworking the stories of the past.
He doesnt see period films as museum pieces.
He doesnt remind you, This is such and such a time.
Roberts hand is in everything.
Everything has a purpose.
That means its easy for actors to be present in that world, too.
If its the right mask, its liberating.
Sometimes youre sitting there for hours.
Speaking of fake teeth, what was the logic in theSpider-Manmovies of giving Norman Osborn, a.k.a.
They havent been fixed.
Theyre a little funky.
I dont mind them.
One of the producers onSpider-Mansaid, Well, arent we going to do something with the teeth?
Its not credible that a CEO would have teeth like that, which I thought was very funny.
They arent looking for Hollywood smiles when they cast me.
Thats never been an issue.
Ive got an expressive face, so leave it alone.
Usually Im pretty amused by it.
Leave yourself out of it!
Im doing press right now.
Im talking to you.
In a perfect world, you wouldnt know anything about me.
You wouldnt know where I live.
You wouldnt know where I come from.
Id just be this guy that becomes these other people.
I feel like the relationship of the audience to movies has changed in the past ten or 15 years.
They expect the movie to come to them.Absolutely.
Theyd rather go home and turn on their TV and see a film that way.
Theres some good things about the platforms.
They create a lot of movies.
They create a lot of jobs.
But theres so many distractions that you cant enter the stuff.
Im not really into it.
Im not really into it.
Then they go to bed.
If you dont put in the effort, youre not going to receive much.
Thats not good for culture, and thats not good for humanity.
We see the results of that all the time.
Like who?Oh, people like Warren Oates and Harry Dean Stanton.
When I found out they studied to be actors, I was like,Damn.
Theyre good.Those guys didnt have that stink of being an actor.
Not even a little bit.
When I was really little, I grew up on horror films.
I thought Boris Karloff was fantastic.
I thought Vincent Price was a hoot.
I never had that kind of Monty CliftMarlon Brando thing.
Something to posit: Is it possible for there to be a good performance in a bad movie?
Because, well, what are you cutting up responsibility for?
The film is a wholething.So how can it be a good performance if it doesnt serve the movie?
Ive seen lots of good performances in bad movies, though.
One cant know what happened on set to allow such a thing.
Its not like that.
Or not in my experience.
We have little conferences about the psychological aspects.
Its much more practical.
But maybe thats me.
Maybe they just let me go!
Im doing this other thing?Never.
I dont think ever.
Ive been annoyed sometimes when someone pushes me in a direction I dont feel comfortable with.
Then I get there and I make a run at give myself over to the actions.
Thats the beautiful thing about making movies.
They have their own life.
They come alive or they die, but they shift.
And you have to be sensitive to that.
You surrender to the process.Yes.
I think its the only way.
I sought Wes Anderson out.
I invited him to a theater performance of theWooster Group.
We had a beautiful dinner.
So maybe Ill see you in five years.
About three months later, I got a call.
Wes said, Someone dropped out, and theres a role Id like you to do.
What itch does that scratch for you?I just like being in his company.
Hes such a master at what he does; he gets more articulate and powerful with each film.
Its fun to be in his world because the sensibility is very precise.
Klaus exposed the myth of German efficiency and strength.
Now Im going to get hate mail from German people!
Well, we wouldnt want that!
But I know what you mean.Weve got to debunk these myths.
Thats what will make us all kumbaya together.
You started your career in experimental theater at the Wooster Group, which you co-founded in 1980.
It formed me in many ways.
The most basic thing is it reminded me that the technicians and the actors are almost interchangeable.
The technicians would also do acting functions, and the actors would do technical functions.
She is very idiosyncratic, but I always had great admiration for her commitment and her patience and tenacity.
It always felt closer to dance for me.
It was aboutdoingthings, and as you did them, things would happen to you.
I am not really a director punch in of personality.
I didnt want to watch things.
You see that in dance.
You see a body out there moving in time, and I like being there for that.
Why didnt you finish your degree?I had ants in my pants.
I was a young man and I wanted to get out in the world.
I came from the Midwest in atown of 50,000 people.
I just wanted to startdoing.
Thats something you could do in a time when a kind ofamateur aestheticwas being embraced.
Were they trained for that?
Was it a career aspiration?
It was an extension of their lives.
Being around these artists was infectious.
You have to make it about other people and go toward that.
Im not being falsely modest or anything.
I had a different intention from them.
Since we were making original work at Wooster Group, there was a real tension.
Neither was a healthy solution for the company.
And then there were some changes inpersonal things.
What was that like?It was fantastic because William was on fire.
He wanted to make a movie that was down and dirty.
And every day there was some big surprise.
Sometimes youd get to the set and he was like, Were not doing that at all.
Were going to do this.
You always had to be on your feet.
Because late in his life, headmitted that he had done that.What do you mean?
[Laughs] Imadethe counterfeit money!
You see it in the movie!
If you think people didnt maybe put one in their pocket to see if they could pass it …
But, dont get me arrested!
That wasa long time ago.
I hear so many wild stories about Friedkin.
What does that accomplish?It gets something thats not premeditated.
But no, I was never offered it.
But at that point, I was on some kind of list to play Batman.
Dont fucking make that face!
Im just reacting to not having heard that before.
I love the idea.
Well, thank you.
But thats just not the way it goes.
I want to talk to you about what I think of as your Jesus trilogy.
So my body is rigged with squibs, these little explosive hits they used in the old days.
There are all these explosions.
I know where they are.
Im at the edge of a clearing in the jungle, and there are hundreds of extras behind me.
Its so emblematic of the tragedy of the personal, bodily destruction of war.
But it was the first film I did that really got seen internationally.
Its nice to play a martyr.
Its nice to have strong actions.
Its nice to be against the current.
But were talking about things that happened 30 years ago.
I am much more interested in recent things.
But youre one of the greats.
Thats one of the reasons I like working with young actors, with people who arent cynical.
They think theyre having the time of their life!
But okay, lets talk about whatever you guide us to.
Does that seem fair?I think thats fair.
But if you said all that to a studio executive, they might break into a sweat.
The Green Goblin is an example.
You play that role like its Macbeth.It is!
But when we did the originalSpider-Man,it was new territory.
I got to do a lot of fun things.
Its fun to fly around.
Its fun to fight.
Its fun to careen from comedy to drama in a second.
Thats fertile territory when youre dealing with questions of morality and good and bad.
you could bait and switch.
you could play and then get serious.
you might turn it on its head.
Because when I see a film, I have strong associations with the making of the movie.
And I like movies best when they look like they felt when I was making them.
Its a little dangerous sometimes to give lots of variations.
Sometimes youll be surprised by the editing: by the selection, by what modes they went with.
Its an editors medium.
You got to give em the stuff to work with.
Thats why the most important thing for an actor is everything should be played for keeps.
What about him synced up with you?He knows how to speak about the unspeakable.
The opening and ending ofAntichrist,thats great cinema.
Everybody thinks hes just a wise guy.
Its funny that people sometimes talk about his films beingmisogynist.
He identifies with the women characters, and hes telling their stories because hes trying to figure something out.
All these things that are scary stuff.
Youre living in Rome these days, right?Outside of Rome, yes.
Ive bumped around a lot, and I keep the place in New York.
But I started having a place here 20 years ago.
I tend to split my time between Rome and New York.
Theyre complimentary cities, in a funny way.
Youve done six movies with him over a 24-year period.Sure, sure.
Thats not why Im here, but thats one of the benefits of being here.
Sometimes thats a nightmare because actors have to become writers on their feet.
But this was a case of inventing things while not really inventing things.
They were all things that I was familiar with and he wasfamiliar with.
I dont want tonotencourage people to get clean.
I think its a good thing to do.
The movies seem to have a different energy.
Theyre more contemplative and focused.Not only has Abel become clean, hes also taken refuge: Hes a Buddhist.
I dont mean to be glib by saying he hasnt changed.
My point is he still has the same manic energy.
Sometimes he encourages a kind of chaos that hes able to funnel into creativity.
And often were working with very minimal budgets, so you have to really be light on your feet.
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee!
I see things sometimes as a game, in a beautiful way.
Dont get me wrong: Im disciplined.
Im conscientious, probably to a fault.
I could probably even be looser.
I cant help it.
Ive done a lot of interviews with actors in which they seem to denigrate their profession to some degree.
Ive never seen you do that.Acting can be stupid.
It can be selfish; it can be narcissistic.
It can be all kinds of things.
When do you just sit at home?
One rolls into the other for me.
I like that I dont separate it out.
I do many things besides movies.
Do you meditate?Yes, but thats not my main thing.
I do physical practice every day.
Its a spiritual practice as well as a physical one.
In the case ofEternitys Gate, I had a very good painting teacher in Julian Schnabel, the director.
Paint what you see.
You make a mark and then you make another mark, and you see them turn into something.
Its not a representation of the tree.
Its an expression of what you see.
That keys you into the interplay of things.
Walnuts are not just something that you eat.
I can see the whole world in those walnuts.
Does the wordrealismhave any meaning to you as an actor?No.
When you sayrealism,I think of naturalism, and I think about natural acting.
And when I think about natural acting, I think about natural behavior.
And I think sometimes that destroys movies, you know?
Because we dont just want to see imitations of life.
We want to see something that isbeyondthat.
Cinema is not just about telling stories.
Everybody clings to this.
Telling stories, telling stories, telling stories!
Youve just summarized my entire philosophy of what cinema is.
I dont really care much about plot.I dont either!
But were all different.
My wife is always going, Dont tell me what happens.
I couldnt care less.
Tell me the whole story!
When I watch it, Im going to forget about where it goes anyway.
Its not about what happens.
Because theres nothing new under the sun.
You have a philosophy that informs why you do what you do.Good.
Thats always the tension.
Youve got to find the sweet spot between control and abandon.
And that is a beautiful feeling.
Dont do this to get that.
Do it for the pleasure of doing it.
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