KARLOVY VARY – Often when an actor wins a lifetime achievement honor, they can be somewhat prickly in discussing their career — especially for an actor where the insecurities over landing major roles never fade away. Speaking at a press conference celebrating his receiving the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival’s Crystal Globe for his contributions to world cinema, Willem Dafoe seemed overjoyed with the attention. And, frankly, can you blame him?
Dafoe is on a very short list of nominated actors who still haven’t taken home a coveted Academy Award even after legacy-defining roles in films such as “The Last Temptation Of Christ,” “The English Patient,” “Wild At Heart,” “Platoon,” “Shadow Of The Vampire,” “Auto Focus” and “Antichrist,” just to name a few. He’s one of the few living actors to appear in two Best Picture winners (“The English Patient,” “Platoon”) and three other nominees (“Mississippi Burning,” “The Aviator,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel”). He’s a legend that simply hasn’t gotten his due until now.
At 61 years old, Dafoe looks like he hasn’t aged in 20 years and is just as busy as he was in the mid-’90s. Beyond a key role in the upcoming “Justice League” and reprising his vocal performance as Gill in “Finding Dory,” Dafoe has three pictures in the can including “The Headhunter’s Calling,” Zhang Yimou’s “The Great Wall,” and “What Happened to Monday?” with Glenn Close and Noomi Rapace. On this July afternoon, however, Dafoe was more than happy to venture down memory lane and discuss his past work. And while you might have heard a few of these stories in past interviews, chances are you’ll learn something new from an actor who’s had his hand in some the most iconic movies of the past 35 years.
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On his theatrical origins
What made me want to become an actor? I don’t remember. Really, I don’t. It was gradual. For a lot of professions, you train formally and then you try to make a career. I had very little formal training and the way I trained was through the theater. It was a time when it was very modest theater. It didn’t smell like career-building. It was for the excitement of now. So I never prepared. But being with that company, which eventually found success, for 25 years, I thought, “Yeah, I guess I’m an actor.” When people started asking me to do movies and I started making my living doing movies I thought, “Yeah, I’m an actor,” but I never had a goal and then went towards it.
On the characters he usually plays
I don’t think I play negative characters. I think they are unconventional, but as an actor I am giving those characters their day in court. I’m trying to give a different perspective. So I guess I’ve always been interested in characters that are a little on the outside and afford us a different view of the world that we normally receive in the press and from the mainstream. I think I’ve always been attracted to outsiders because somehow how they see the world can help us challenge how we can see the world.
On the passing Michael Cimino and the legacy of “Heaven’s Gate”
I felt very sad when I heard the news. I was not close to him. I did work on “Heaven’s Gate.” In fact, he fired me from “Heaven’s Gate.” But there are no hard feelings because I didn’t take it personally. He was under a lot of pressure. In fact, he asked me to work with him again after that, but I wasn’t available. We made up. I lost track of him through the years and even though I felt the sting of “Heaven’s Gate,” personally I think it’s sad what happened. It was the end of the possibility of there being Hollywood auteurs because the bean counters came down hard on the excesses of the artists. And “Heaven’s Gate,” there were some difficulties. It was supposed to shoot for a very short time and it became eight months. It wasn’t just a financial thing. I think the people working on the film were very stressed. The local people were stressed. He was very demanding. Those very demands are what made him sometimes a very good filmmaker and he’s made some great films. You hate to hear anyone’s passing and it’s a shame that he really hadn’t made a film since “[The] Sunchaser” because he was forever being punished for what was seen as excesses and the failure of “Heaven’s Gate.” Which in fact, not everyone agrees with. Some regard the film as a masterpiece. So I feel sad.
READ MORE: R.I.P. ‘The Deer Hunter’ & ‘Heaven’s Gate’ Director Michael Cimino
Did he ever consider getting his teeth “fixed”?
As far as my smile, I never thought about it. I started out as a theater actor and I still perform in the theater, but that was really my background and that was my identity. In the theater, you don’t think so much of personality or selling your looks or anything like that. It was never a consideration to change my teeth because they were my teeth and they looked fine to me.
On working with Lars von Trier
I love working with Lars. I’d work with him pretty much on anything. He’s a great filmmaker and I like “Antichrist” very much. “Antichrist” was very difficult because he was in a very personal place and it was a very personal film for him. He was quite delicate, quite phobic, but he worked very well and gives actors great freedom in the respect that he gives a great set-up. He’s got a very good eye. He frames you very well. He guides you very well not so much in talking to you but by creating a good circumstance. I learn much from him when I work with him. I’m always challenged and excited. I think he’s one of our best filmmakers.
The story of how he first read the script for von Trier’s “Antichrist”
He showed me the script originally not by design. I got in touch with him and I said, “Lars, what are you doing?” And he said, “Well, I’m working on this script, but I don’t know. Would you like to read it?” Y’know, just to give him feedback. The idea was not to present the role to me. And I like the script so much that I said, “Lars, this is a beautiful script.” And he said, “Really? Would you like to do it?” And I said yes. Originally his idea was first to cast the woman because she’s the heart of the piece. The man’s role in that movie is a very difficult and interesting role, but it’s less at the emotional center. He really wanted to cast the woman first, but since my interest was so strong, he said, “Yes, let’s start with you” and then we started looking for the woman [who was eventually portrayed by Charlotte Gainsbourg].
On his collaborations with experimental director Robert Wilson
I love Bob Wilson. It was a very good experience working with him. Bob Wilson is an American-born…theater and opera director. He’s got a long career. He’s fantastic. He has a very particular, formal, very theatrical style. I did two pieces with him. One [was] a very big production called “The Life And Death Of Marina Abramovic;” and “The Old Woman,” which was a production based on the writings of Daniil Kharms. That was just with two actors and it was sort of a movement piece. The other actor was Mikhail Baryshnikov. Bob Wilson is very particular. I loved working with him because his language is so developed that it frees you. His language is so articulate that once you give yourself to his language, there is a lot of room for you to inhabit it. You don’t waste a lot of energy finding the gesture, because he gives you the gesture. And then a lot of your energy and everything you have intention to perform is put into perfecting that, coloring it, living in it. He gives you a beautiful set-up. He gives you a very strong form to work with, and then it’s your job to fill that form.
The differences between big-budget superhero movies and art-house films
Every movie is different and I kind of don’t like to generalize. But clearly, the aesthetics of a movie and the way a movie is made depends on the economics of a movie. Everyone knows this. I’m not telling you anything new. The bigger the financial commitment, the more it gets controlled and the more cooks you have in the kitchen. It’s more possible to make a personal, integrated film at a lower budget because you are responsible to less people to explain to them what it is. You don’t have to be so careful and so calculating. For a bigger budget, you can make a more personal film, but it’s more difficult because you have to pay off the investment so you have to have it appeal to a lot of people. So generally, I think I’m less involved in that because I think movies at their best really challenge how we think. Most designed popular movies…usually just titillate us or make us forget our lives for a little while. I think I am more interested in movies that inspire us and challenge how we think. Most people, fair enough, don’t go to the movies for that.
On the never-ending following behind “Boondock Saints”
It’s sort of a cult movie, but it’s got a wildly popular following. What’s interesting about it was, it was a movie that was much hyped even before it was made because Harvey Weinstein had found this bartender who wrote a script and he was going to turn him into the next Tarantino and there was a big publicity push and all this sort of [buzz about it]. The film wasn’t even made yet and the movie was sort of famous in the States. Then the director and Harvey Weinstein started fighting. They couldn’t agree on a cast and Harvey let it go. So this guy who was famous for never having made a movie all of a sudden was in search of a new producer. He found it and he made it in [a] more down-and-dirty, simpler way, but he was a kid that watched movies, loved movies and felt like there was something missing. He wasn’t trained as a screenwriter, but he wrote a personal movie, a very politically incorrect movie, [a] movie with a lot of humor. When he approached me, I thought, “Wow, he’s interesting. He’s fresh. He’s original.” So we made this very modest movie. There was lot of collaboration. It was a strong script, but whenever [you] work on a low budget, you usually have to make lots of adjustments. There is more possibility or collaboration at that level than there is with a big industrial movie.
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What he thinks about Gal Gadot and what he can say about “Justice League”
She looks good. (Laughs) I don’t want to talk about that. I’ve got so many movies to talk about. I’ll let them orchestrate the publicity on that movie. I’m happy to be a part of it and when it comes out I’ll be talking about it ad nauseam. I shot part of it and I’ll go back and shoot some more. This is a DC Comics “Justice League” movie. Which is shooting now. Too soon to talk about.
On playing Jesus in Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation Of Christ”
At the time, it didn’t occur to me that it was going to be a controversial film. I didn’t consider it a brave choice, because I didn’t have that sort of consciousness about it. Martin Scorsese asking me to play a lead character in a movie he had been trying to make for many years, a movie that was close to his heart, made for a very modest budget, shooting in Morocco — this all sounded good. It seemed strange that he offered the role of Jesus to me, but then, when I read the script, I knew what he was trying to do and I was happy to accept the role. Clearly, the story examines the human aspect of Jesus, the kind of working-class Jesus, and I responded to that. I didn’t know what to do in the prep and he gave me very little instruction before. The only thing he’d told me to do was watch “The Gospel According To Matthew,” the Pasolini movie, to kind of give me a cue that he didn’t want it to be dogmatic religiously, how he wanted it to be without pageantry. He wanted it be simple and he wanted to examine the very Pasolinian humanness of it.
Did the controversy over “The Last of Temptation Of Christ” change his career?
Sure, but who knows how? I do know that on a couple occasions, but not excessively, on two occasions that aren’t worth telling the particulars of, they did not want me to do [a] role because I was kept from a couple roles because of the association of the movie. One was funded by basically religious group money and that was quite recent, and then another one was a Western where I met with [the director] and we were all set to go and then I got a call from the studio saying, “Under no circumstances are you going to be in this movie. Right now you’re too associated with ‘The Last Temptation Of Christ’ and it’s a liability to have you in this movie, so you’re not going to be in it. I don’t care what the director says. I’m the final word.” That was the head of the studio. That’s it. On those two occasions it did affect me. But generally, I like the movie and there was a positive feeling towards it critically, so I think it contributed well to my career.
On whether Sam Raimi’s “Spider-Man” was a career boost
I think “Spider-Man” helped terrifically in that respect. Y’know, my struggle is, I try to make a certain type of a movie and some of those movies don’t get distributed widely. And if people don’t see you for a while, it’s hard to follow your career. And as distribution gets kind of less creative, the big movie takes all the interest of the people. So when you do a movie that’s widely distributed, popular and a good movie and what you do with it is regarded well, that has to be good for your career.
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