Willem Dafoe received his star on the Hollywood Stroll of Fame in January. It seems like he’s been making an attempt to earn it ever since.
Dafoe appeared in six roles in 4 exceptional motion pictures this 12 months: Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu,” Jason Reitman’s “Saturday Night,” Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” and Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Kinds of Kindness.”
Not that the 69-year-old actor in any approach must show himself. Dafoe has made greater than 150 movie and TV initiatives, landed 4 performing Oscar nominations (“Platoon,” “Shadow of the Vampire,” “The Florida Project,” “At Eternity’s Gate”) and may have gotten one other for one of many half-dozen 2023 motion pictures he was in (Lanthimos’ “Poor Things,” in the event you should ask).
Does he ever cease working? Lengthy a mainstay of New York’s experimental Wooster Group theater firm, Dafoe spends most of his time without work in Rome along with his filmmaker spouse, Giada Colagrande. Time for different passions? Eggers, who additionally directed the actor in “The Northman” and “The Lighthouse,” believes so.
“Willem is a very deep person with many interests outside of acting and outside of himself, which unfortunately is not true of all actors,” Eggers says. “And he just loves to do.”
“That sounds good!” Dafoe says with an unmistakable raspy cackle over the telephone. “The truth is, I may not be shooting all the time, but I always feel like I’m working. I’m either preparing things or checking things out, watching movies or reading. So I’m really a little obsessed with this making movies and theater game.”
Researching roles is how he expands his thoughts.
“That’s one of the pleasures of my profession,” he says. “It gives you an excuse to learn things that you might not know much about. And it helps root what you’re doing. When you learn things, you can apply the pretending in a different way.”
“Because he’s a little eccentric, he’s not quite seeing the world the same as the other characters are,” Willem Dafoe says of his Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz character in “Nosferatu.”
(Aidan Monaghan/Focus Options)
For “Nosferatu’s” Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz, the actor brushed up on occult sciences — as they have been understood in 1838. The remake of the silent horror basic pits Von Franz in opposition to Invoice Skarsgård’s ghastly Rely Orlok, the Dracula determine on this Germanic riff on Bram Stoker’s vampire story.
“There’s a welcome sense of humor about it,” Dafoe says of his energized take. “Because he’s a little eccentric, he’s not quite seeing the world the same as the other characters are. It’s a relief from the heavy Victorian vibe.”
Although a “Nosferatu” veteran — he portrayed Orlok actor Max Schreck in “Shadow of the Vampire,” the 2000 movie concerning the making of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 masterpiece — Dafoe avoided giving Skarsgård suggestions.
“He didn’t need any,” Dafoe laughs. “I would never give an actor advice. You get in trouble when you start putting your stuff on other people. Everybody’s got to find their own way.”
As real-life NBC govt Dave Tebet, Dafoe is actually the grownup in “Saturday Night’s” room as chaos engulfs the younger comedians pratfalling towards the sketch present’s 1975 first broadcast. Masking conflicting priorities with a gruff exterior, Tebet finally decides whether or not to throw the “live” change at 11:30 or reduce to a Johnny Carson rerun.
“There was a part of him that wanted them to succeed, another part of him was pragmatic and wanted to take care of his business, and a part didn’t want them to succeed,” Dafoe observes. “It’s interesting when a character has mixed objectives and they go back and forth, depending on the scene and who they’re talking to.”
“Saturday Night’s” lengthy Steadicam takes — by way of a wonderfully re-created Studio 8H, 2022 “SNL” host Dafoe attests — gave the stage veteran further juice.
“You dance with the camera and the other actors,” he says. “When you have that double concentration, it really focuses you. It forces you to not lay back, becomes quite athletic. You don’t show, point, preen or strut, you do. That’s always the sweet spot.”
For Wolf Jackson, the lifeless tough-guy actor within the blockbuster “Beetlejuice” sequel, Dafoe referenced an amalgam of TV detectives and couldn’t resist going for “the Jack Lord hair.”
Whereas undoubtedly an auteur piece, Burton’s afterlife comedy operated at a stage just like the “Spider-Man” and “Aquaman” tentpoles the actor has appeared in.
“Big event movies are huge investments,” indie mainstay Dafoe acknowledges. “Your job is to elevate what you’re doing and not do it by the numbers. You have to find a personal reason for being there. It’s not just a question of being a good soldier; it’s to make the character live.”
Willem Dafoe stars within the 2020 movie “Siberia.”
(www.federicovagliati.it)
Within the three-part “Kinds of Kindness,” Dafoe performs a CEO who controls each side of his workers’ lives and a jealous intercourse guru who needs to convey the lifeless again to life. Vicarious enjoyable to play such manipulative characters?
“Whether it’s manipulating or being manipulated, that’s [another] pleasure of my profession,” Dafoe says. “You get to take on different patterns, thinking and feelings in a safe way. Whether it’s a villain or someone that’s more heroic, it doesn’t really matter.
“There is something special about being able to do terrible things that you’re not going to get punished for,” he admits. “But it works the other way too. There’s a power in doing positive and beautiful things without necessarily getting the rewards of it. It can humble you and humanize you and, ironically, get you off yourself because you can poke holes into your conditioning.”
We expect he’s earned that star.
