Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
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What makes Willem Dafoe a versatile actor?
He also has one of the most distinctive faces and voices in movies, which has been deployed to great effect in blockbusters and smaller indie darlings. Dafoe's most recent project is the highly anticipated vampire film Nosferatu, It's his third movie with the director Robert Eggers, who's known for his ambitious and meticulously researched genre movies, like The Witch and The Northman. In Nosferatu, Willem Dafoe plays the vampire hunter. So he's a good guy, but with a shadowy disposition.
I have seen things in this world that would have made Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother's womb. We have not become so much enlightened as we have been blinded by the gaseous light of science. I have wrestled with the devil as Jacob wrestled the angel and pendulum. And I tell you, if we are to tame darkness, we must first face that it exists. Minor Hanon, we are here and come.
I spoke to Willem Dafoe about his acting philosophy and his work with the visionary director Robert Eggers. I should start by telling you I just recently showed my three-year-old fantastic Mr. Fox, and your performance left quite an impression on her. As the rat? Yeah, the rat.
Around these parts, we don't take kindly to the side of poachers. You've aged badly, Rat. You're getting a little long in the tooth yourself, Portman. Being security, why are you wearing that badge? What is it? It's my job.
She was like, why is he carrying a knife? It's one of those three-year-old questions that I'm like, there's really no good answer to that. He's just a little menacing. But I'm curious, in your experience, do you find that people have a hard time disassociating you from the roles that you play?
I think absolutely. I can pretty much tell what movies people have seen by how they behave. approach me or how they speak to me. What's the thing that you get approached about the most? Well, the most widely seen movie probably is Spider-Man, that series. So that's a lot. But I'm ridiculously admittedly proud to say that it's pretty varied, you know? Yeah. Sometimes people try to even impress you by coming up and saying, Giving a shout out to a really obscure movie. Right. Because I make lots of movies, and some are small movies, some are big movies. So someone comes up, they talk about Spider-Man, or some older guy comes up, talks about Platoon, or some guy that is probably 30 years old now comes up and talks about Boondock Saints.
But then occasionally someone will say, I saw a new Rose Hotel yesterday. Wow, fantastic. So it's pretty varied.
You have one of the most, I think, enviable track records in terms of working with directors. You've worked with David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Catherine Bigelow, Wes Anderson. I can go on and on and on. Robert Eggers, this is now your third collaboration with him. I wonder if you could speak about what's unique and special about your relationship with really filmmakers in general, like how you approach working with directors, but also how does Robert Eggers sort of fit in the pantheon of people you've worked with?
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