Willem Dafoe played mostly bad guys and weirdos until an Oscar-nominated role in Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986) made him a star. Compelling and intense, Dafoe started in the movies in the 1980s after extensive work in experimental theater. Instead of going the leading man route, Dafoe showed tremendous range in a variety of roles: he played Jesus in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), a very gnarly bad guy in David Lynch's Wild at Heart (1990, starring Nicolas Cage), a troubled son and brother in Affliction (1998, with Nick Nolte) and a creepy, bloodsucking actor in Shadow of the Vampire (2000). A versatile and hard-working actor, he's a familiar face at the box office. His films include To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Body of Evidence (1993, with Madonna), The Boondock Saints (1999), The Clearing (2004, with Robert Redford), and, playing the Green Goblin, the Spider-Man movies directed by Sam Raimi (2002-07).
Known for the darkly eccentric characters he often plays, Willem Dafoe is one of the screen's more provocative and engaging actors. Strong-jawed and wiry, he has commented that his looks make him ideal for playing the boy next door -- if you happen to live next door to a mausoleum.
Although his screen persona may suggest otherwise, Dafoe is the product of a fairly conventional Midwestern upbringing. The son of a surgeon and one of seven siblings, he was born on July 22, 1955 in Appleton, Wisconsin. Dafoe began acting as a teenager, and at the age of seventeen he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. Growing weary of the university's theatre department, where he found that temperament was all too often a substitute for talent, he joined Milwaukee's experimental Theatre X troupe. After touring stateside and throughout Europe with the group, Dafoe moved to New York in 1977, where he joined the avant-garde Wooster Group.
Dafoe's 1981 film debut was a decidedly mixed blessing, as it consisted of a minor role in Michael Cimino's disastrous Heaven's Gate . Ultimately, Dafoe's screen time was cut from the film's final release print, saving him the embarrassment of being associated with the film but also making him something of a nonentity. He went on to appear in such films as The Hunger (1983) and To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) before making his breakthrough in Platoon (1986). His portrayal of the insouciant, pot-smoking Sgt. Elias earned him Hollywood recognition and a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination.
Choosing his projects based on artistic merit rather than box office potential, Dafoe subsequently appeared in a number of widely divergent films, often taking roles that enhanced his reputation as one of the American cinema's most predictably unpredictable actors. After starring as an idealistic FBI agent in Mississippi Burning (1988), he took on one of his most memorable and controversial roles as Jesus in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). Dafoe then portrayed a paralyzed, tormented Vietnam vet in Born on the Fourth of July (1989), his second collaboration with Oliver Stone. Homicidal tendencies and a mouthful of rotting teeth followed when he played an ex-marine in David Lynch's Wild at Heart (1990), before he got really weird and allowed Madonna to drip hot wax on his naked body in Body of Evidence (1992).
Following a turn in Wim Wenders' Faraway, So Close in 1993, Dafoe entered the realm of the blockbuster with his role as a mercenary in Clear and Present Danger (1994). That same year, he earned acclaim for his portrayal of T.S. Eliot in Tom and Viv, one of the few roles that didn't paint the actor as a contemporary head case. His appearance as a mysterious, thumbless World War II intelligence agent in The English Patient (1996) followed in a similar vein. In 1998, Dafoe returned to the contemporary milieu, playing an anthropologist in Paul Auster's Lulu on the Bridge and a member of a ragingly dysfunctional family in Paul Schrader's powerful, highly acclaimed Affliction. He then extended his study of dysfunction as a creepy gas station attendant in David Cronenberg's eXistenZ (1999). After chasing a pair of killers claiming to be on a mission from God in The Boondock Saints, Dafoe astounded audiences as he transformed himself into a mirror image of one of the screens most terrfiying vampires in Shadow of the Vampire (2000). A fictional recount of the mystery surrounding F.W. Murnau's 1922 classic Nosferatu, Dafoe's remarkable transformation into the fearsome bloodsucker had filmgoers blood running cold with it's overwhelming creepiness and tortured-soul humor. After turning up as a cop on the heels of a potentially homicidal yuppie in American Psycho that same year, the talented actor would appear in such low-profile releases as The Reconing and Bullfighter (both 2001), before once again thrilling audiences in a major release. As the fearsome Green Goblin in director Sam Raimi's long-anticipated big-screen adaptation of Spider-Man Dafoe certainly provided thrills in abundance as he soared trough the sky leaving death and destruction in his wake. His performace as a desperate millionare turned schizphrenic supervillian proved a key component in adding a human touch to the procedings in contrast to the dazzling action, and Dafoe next headed south of the border to team with flamboyant director Robert Rodriguez in Once Upon a Time in Mexico. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi
Dafoe has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor twice. The first was for his role in Platoon in 1986 and the second time for his performance in Shadow of the Vampire in 2000.
Dafoe was born William J. Dafoe[1] in Appleton, Wisconsin The sixth of seven children[citation needed] of Muriel Isabell née Sprissler, a nurse,[2] and Dr. William Alfred Dafoe,[2] a surgeon,[3] he recalled in 2009, "My five sisters raised me because my father was a surgeon, my mother was a nurse and they worked together, so I didn't see either of them much."[4] In high school, he acquired the nickname Willem.[5] His ancestry includes Irish, Scottish, German, and Canadian.[2][6]
Dafoe, who would continue with the Wooster Group into 2000s,[8] began his film career in 1981, when he was cast in Heaven's Gate[9] only to see his role removed from the film during editing.[1] As Dafoe recalled of his first film experience, in which he played a cock fighter,
I worked for Jeff Bridges' character in the story. I was there for three months and I worked a lot. It was the kind of thing where you were hired to play an unscripted character and then they developed these smaller characters. I had scenes and everything and was really enjoying it and then one day we were doing a lighting setup for a long time; basically eight hours standing in place, and a woman told me a joke in my ear and I laughed at a moment of silence. Cimino turned around and said, 'Willem step out,' and that was that. I was the lamb for sacrifice."[10]
In the mid-1980s he was cast by William Friedkin to star in To Live and Die In L.A., in which Dafoe portrays counterfeiter Rick Masters. A year later he starred as the leader of a motorcycle gang in The Loveless, and later played a similar role in Streets of Fire. He became "very conscious" that he might be typecast as a villain, saying in 1998,
...I really made a conscious effort to mix it up, not because in itself it's not the job of an actor to do all different things, but for me that's what I'm interested in. You've got to be careful because you've got to work with what you have, not just for vanity's sake, but I think the best part of being an actor sometimes is the opportunity to transform yourself superficially, and deeply. So, it's true in the beginning I started playing villains and I think that's pretty clear because if you don't conventionally look a certain way and you've got a certain kind of presence when you're young, then what's available to you is character roles and the best character roles when you're young tend to be villains. And, also, it's fun to be bad and the only problem is often villain roles are devices and they lack a certain depth. They're signs, they're signals and after a little while you want something to chew on and if you function in a film it's the same too often. I think what happens is you develop a language that distances you from a certain kind of flashpoint of inspiration and creativity and you may refine that and that may be your work, but I'm not so interested in that. I think the best work comes when you're unsure, when you're terrified, when you're off balance.[6]
Dafoe would go on to gain his widest exposure to that time playing the compassionate Sergeant Elias in Platoon. He enjoyed the opportunity to play a heroic role, and said the film gave him a chance to display his versatility. "I think all characters live in you. You just frame them, give them circumstances, and that character will happen."[11]
In 2011, Dafoe began narrating a series of television commercials for the Greek yogurt company Fage.[13][14] Additionally, the actor is featured in Jim Beam's "Bold Decisions" television ad campaign, which began airing April 2011.[15]
Dafoe since 2010 voices the Birdseye polar bear mascot on UK TV commercials.[16]
Personal life
Dafoe met director Elizabeth LeCompte at The Performance Group and began a professional and personal relationship there and at its successor company, the Wooster Group. Their son, Jack, was born in 1982.[17] The pair eventually split in 2004.[citation needed] Dafoe married Italian actress, director and screenwriter Giada Colagrande on March 25, 2005, a year after the two had met in Rome at the premiere of one of her film. Dafoe said in 2010, "We were having lunch and I said: 'Do you want to get married tomorrow?'". They did so the following afternoon at a small ceremony two friends as witnesses.[17] The two worked together on the film Before It Had a Name.[17] The couple divide their time among Colagrande's native Italy,[8]New York City, and Los Angeles, California.[17]
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