INTERVIEW JANE CROWTHER

‘I STILL HAVE THAT FEA R, THAT SENSE OF NEW NESS, THAT CU RIOSITY EVERY TIME I START A FILM ’

One of Holly wood ’s finest character actors , who challenges audience expectations with his creations , Willem Dafoe tells Total Film how he breathes new life into his roles , including that of a Frankenstein doctor in Yorgos Lanthimos’ awards darling , Poor Things. He’s aliiiive. . .

I always skip onto set,’ Willem Dafoe enthuses as he talks about getting back to work after the lengthy SAG-AFTRA actors’ strike. ‘It’s like riding a bike, right?’ Certainly it could be assumed that for Dafoe, after four decades of challenging roles, many in era-defining works, emoting is now a muscle memory, easy. Like hopping on a bicycle. Apro who’s been on the big screen since his ill-fated 1980 gig on Heaven’s Gate (he was fired for laughing at a dirty joke on set), Dafoe has turned his hand to Oliver Stone war movies, Scorsese biblical epics, David Lynch crime thrillers, Lars von Trier provocations and superhero tentpoles. But the four-time Oscar-nommed character actor, who now primarily resides in Rome with his film-director wife, Giada Colagrande, disagrees. Chatting to Total Film from his Italian home, he looks younger than his 68 years, and his outlook is just as youthful. ‘Sometimes I’m happy with myself, and sometimes I think I’m a bum,’ he laughs. ‘But the one thing I know is that I always show up, and I’m always excited, and I have a good energy. How do you maintain that? By, you know, being with people that have something going on. They need to do something, and you help them do it.’

Dafoe has been helping auteurs achieve their visions since he moved from Wisconsin to New York to join acting troupes and was then lured to movies. He impressed with William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in LA, a springboard to his empathetic Sergeant Elias in Oliver Stone’s war-movie game-changer, Platoon. He was nominated for his first Oscar for the performance that brought audiences to their knees just as his character crashed to his, providing the indelible image for the film’s poster. He’s been Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ, an FBI agent investigating KKK killings in Mississippi Burning, a Lynchian villain in Wild at Heart, a Wes Anderson regular, a Marvel meanie, an oil-swigging lobster fan in The Lighthouse and now the nucleus for Yorgos Lanthimos’ Frankenstein fever dream, Poor Things.

Yes, he’s also graced Body of Evidence, Speed 2 and Mr. Bean’s Holiday, but Dafoe has always bounced back to push the envelope. He’s portrayed the good, the bad and the ugly – a diverse practice that he admits keeps him ‘open’. ‘Different situations, different muscles – that’s important,’ he says. ‘It works against you thinking that there’s a particular way to be, or a particular way to problem-solve, or a particular relationship to have with other actors or with performance or with directors or even producers. It cleans you out, and reminds you that the possibilities are endless. And when you have that, that gives you energy.’ The process of acting is something spiritual, a praxis that, when undertaken truly with humility, feeds the soul. ‘I think there’s something about making things and constructing things and considering other ways of being – I think it makes you function better as a person. You’re given that proposition of saying, “You know what? If my life was different, I could be this guy.”’ And if you’re Dafoe, you’re not playing safe. He grins when his more edgy roles are discussed. ‘How do you bend an iron bar?’ he muses, with a twinkle in his eye. ‘You’ve got to heat it up first…’

Godwin Baxter in Poor Things is another amazing character in an uncompromising film with a visionary director. You’ve had a career of those. Is that your criteria when you’re choosing projects?

Directors have always been very important to me because, with a strong director, I can give myself more freely to someone. I’ve seen them do things that interest me. I want to be in the room with them. It gives me a purpose. The idea is that I’m there to help them. They’re on one side of the camera. I’m the person who does things. I go towards their vision. If that sounds selfless –it’s not so selfless [laughs]. It frees you, because going towards something that you don’t know always gives you a lot more energy than crafting something that you already know. They’re pushing your buttons, and that keeps alive that sense of wonder and play and possibility. It makes your job more of a pleasure. It’s a pleasure of having an adventure, and learning something.

What was it about this particular film that made you want to go on this adventure? Well, to be fair, when you talk about it, it sounds like I choose these directors [laughs]. Of course, that thing about directors is a huge factor, when I do have a choice. But, also, it’s often conditioned by them coming to me. So in the case of Yorgos, Iknew his work, and I liked it a lot. I was on the interview circuit at the end of the year when they had The Favourite and I had At Eternity’s Gate, so I saw that group that did The Favourite. So when Yorgos and Emma [Stone] called me, and they described the story in brief, it was like, ‘Of course.’ I also was struck –and maybe this is too personal –but it’s one of those things that tips your hand. I was in my little office that I have in New York, and behind me is a painting of my father, and next to me is a huge photograph of Marina Abramovi ć doing an autopsy on awoman. So the combination of those two things…

Your father was a surgeon –so was this you being your dad on film? Well, you know, I grew up more as a custodian, as Iwas a teenager; a janitor, a cleaning person. I grew up around medical things –surgery, labs, blood and human

ALAMY, SEARCHLIGHT fluids, that sort of thing. So when they asked me to do it, Iknew I wanted to do it. Then I read the beautiful script, and I thought, ‘This is fantastic.’ I was aware that it had that beautiful hook, that I’d be working with a literal mask, almost, because a huge part of this story is that my character is disfigured. Iknew there’d be heavy make-up involved. Sometimes that’s a pleasure because it’s so much easier to lose yourself when you look in a mirror, and you don’t feel yourself, or see yourself. Also, the time in the chair, and preparing, and radically changing your appearance, it really allows you to step into the pretending so much better.

Let’s go back to the beginning of your career and your first big movie experience, Heaven’s Gate. What might you have told that 25-year-old kid walking onto that film set then? That’s a good question. It was a bad experience because I was, sort of by accident, fired from it, and I was a glorified extra. But the time I was there was very exciting, because [director] Michael Cimino was very demanding, and he thought large, and he thought bold, and he was fun to be

‘W ITH A STRONG DIR ECTOR, I CAN GIV E M YSELF MOR E FREELY ’

around when he was making this. We know what happened with Heaven’s Gate –it got away from him, and then the problems compounded. But, really, that wasn’t such a bad experience. It was just embarrassing to be sent back home with my tail between my legs. But I wouldn’t do anything differently. You can’t apply what you know now to that situation. I still have that fear, and that sense of newness, and that kind of curiosity every time I start a film. I think that’s probably my greatest asset. In a funny way, it’s a defect, and it makes me feel like a child, because you’d think, with time, I would say, ‘Oh, I’ve got this.’ But I never feel that. But it’s a defect that has served me well. Because, each time, I have to figure it out. And I like being in that state of insecurity, fear and curiosity. That’s such a right place to act in, I think. So that person that was in Heaven’s Gate –let him hang [laughs]. Maybe he made a mistake, but mistakes are great teachers, right?

To Live and Die in LA and Platoon came out in quick succession, and really were your calling cards to audiences and the industry. Did it feel like those projects would push the needle for your career at the time?

Keep in mind that my identity was still very much being atheatre actor, and adowntown theatre actor [with The Wooster Group Theatre Company]. It was my life, and Iwas very happy to do movies. But I felt very far away from amovie career. That’s the truth. Iremember being in Hong Kong and Iwalked down the street and saw my name on amarquee for To Live and Die in LA. That’s not something I necessarily wished for, and I didn’t even know what that meant. But it did mean there was some traction there. And Platoon is such agreat film. It’s one of my favourites. Just an incredible ensemble piece, and to be part of that. Not only was it apleasure to do and agood film that was both popular and critically embraced, but also it painted adifferent picture than alot of people saw [of the Vietnam War], and it helped alot of vets that came home in shame, and were not respected. That was atime when you saw, in avery concrete way, the healing power of sharing stories.

Platoon elicited some controversy, but not as much as The Last Temptation of Christ. You must have anticipated controversy with that project...

Call me stupid, but no. Because I can

honestly say, I read that script and I thought it was beautiful. I thought, ‘This Christ is ahuman Christ. It’s something that people can relate to. It’s a beautiful examination of a spiritual impulse. It’s another take on a familiar story.’ I really didn’t anticipate problems. And, in the end, the problems really were about political positioning, I think. That was a particular period in the US when the religious right needed something to drive their point of view home, and Last Temptation was very convenient. And then it morphed into this antisemitic, anti-Hollywood thing. The sad part was, it ruined the release of the movie. Some people thought that it was a provocative movie, and that helped people see it. The truth is, no, it hurt the release.

You reteamed with Scorsese later and you have worked with other auteurs more than once. Does collaborating with an artist you know give you a shorthand or do you start from scratch each time?

I think both, if that’s possible. Working with Robert Eggers three times –each time, we get dialled in quicker, and we can go deeper. If you have a good experience, and you like being in the room with them, and there’s some sort of understanding, then it makes sense. And someone like Wes Anderson or Paul Schrader that I’ve worked with many times, or Abel Ferrara –I like being part of the fabric of their work. I like being a character in their long story –not just in an individual film. I think that’s fun for an audience, and it’s fun for me.

Some of those directors you return to offer raw, uncompromising, challenging work. Is that a lure? Yes. It’s no fun if you don’t have a challenge, you know? There are exceptions. But generally you want to have something new happen to you. You want to have an experience. You want to be transformed.

Let’s talk about Mississippi Burning –do you think that film would be made now? Viewed through a contemporary lens, it’s something of a white-saviour story. I’m many years away from it, but I always felt that was interesting. There’s a shift both in my character and in Gene Hackman’s character, because their relationship to the situation changes. And I still think it has a lot to say in our current climate. Even if people don’t like the positioning of it, what the story is about, and what the issues are, are still incredibly relevant. If art can open up a door to somebody understanding a different part of our world, then it’s still a valid film. And it’s beautiful.

Let’s also talk about 1990, when you worked with John Waters on Cry-Baby and David Lynch on Wild at Heart in the same year. What did you learn from those experiences?

Iknew John for many years and he asked me to do this fun thing in Cry-Baby. Also, that’s after Platoon, so it was one of my first reunions with Johnny [Depp]. I spanked him on the bottom! And Lynch, I had contact with him before when he was doing Blue Velvet. I think he was looking at me as apossible back-up for Frank Booth. It wasn’t offered to me –let’s be clear –but Imet him on that. And I thought, ‘This guy is special.’ Wild at Heart was a beautiful script. I liked that character a lot. It played on my imagination, and I had fun playing it. But I didn’t break a sweat [laughs]. I didn’t do big research or anything. It was all in my imagination, and that was brought up mostly by the costume, the look and, of course, the writing –and, above all, those prosthetic teeth. My only contribution to my look –and this goes back to John Waters –was that little moustache. But other than that, David really held out a costume on ahanger, and said, ‘This is your costume.

We’ve got to get you to a dentist.’ He wanted me to have this full set of dentures.

It was excellent, because I couldn’t close my mouth.

That opened up a lascivious, nasty kind of part of me that I could access thanks to that physical sensation.

Is that part of your process? Looking for something physical to access your character?

I look for whatever gives me the authority to say, ‘I am this guy, and only me.’ I take a jump. And to take that jump, you’ve got to create an experience, or alter your experience, to have special information, or feel like you have something to experience. It’s like creating parallel lives. We all are capable of any kind of behaviour, and to bring out certain behaviours, it’s just about allowing yourself to connect and find that part of you that can do that thing.

You’ve played some unpleasant characters –do they get to you? Is it hard to shake them off? For the most part, you’re activated by the camera and the circumstances. I always feel like the circumstances bring the character out. The externals bring the character out. When you drop those, unless you’re hanging on to them, they go back within you, kind of to regroup and find their black hole somewhere within you.

‘PL ATOON IS A GRE AT FILM. IT ’S ON E OF MY FAVOU RITES’

It sounds like we’re talking about Green Goblin, doesn’t it? [Laughs] Maybe.

Do you think audience appetite has changed in the time since you’ve made the Spider-Man films? Is superhero fatigue real?

Audiences have definitely changed, because how we see things, and what we accept as normal, and what we anticipate is always changing. But mostly, the internet and smartphones have changed everybody to the degree that they get involved in those things. It’s just crazy. So, of course, now it’s much different than the first Spider-Man I did. But superhero fatigue –I don’t know. They still keep on making and spinning off superhero movies. There’s an audience for it. I think it has to do with the fact that internationally they do very well. The big set-pieces, the broad strokes of some of the morality of it all, and the heart that they try to create in these little moral dilemmas –it’s very universal. People can plug in to it all over the world. And since it’s afantasy world, people can enter it on their own terms.

Is it fun to go from a small character piece to a big green-screen blockbuster like Spider-Man?

It’s fun. I like doing the physical stuff because it’s challenging, it’s athletic, it’s kind of goofy. And then you’re dealing with these huge sets, and all these resources. Of course, like anything, the bigger it is, the more cooks you have. The more considerations you have. But Ifind that even with bigger budgets and bigger movies, they try to be creative in those very corporate moviemaking ventures. So I can’t be snotty about it –sometimes you have pasta, sometimes you have sushi.

When you’re working with someone like Lars von Trier, what’s that energy like? You know you’re jumping off a cliff, but he gives you so many beautiful things to play with. And he’s very refined in the actual production elements. It’s not that he’s just shooting from the hip –he’s really well prepared, and he’s a very cultured guy. I think the beautiful thing about him is that he has a real knack for speaking the unspeakable. He says the things that nobody allows themselves to say, particularly in Antichrist. It was very difficult [to shoot]. He was quite unwell at the time, and very troubled. He would say to Charlotte [Gainsbourg] and me every night, ‘I may not be there tomorrow. Imay be directing

WILLEM DAFOE IN NUMBERS Number of features he’s made with Wes Anderson Number of films he’s been in that have been nominated for Best Picture Oscar Oscar nominations to date 5 6 4 146 1980 CREDITS ON IMDb DATE OF FIRST MOVIE, HEAVEN’S GATE. HE WAS FIRED FOR LAUGHING AT ACREW MEMBER’S JOKE

from the trailer.’ He said that every day, and he showed up every day. And he was very present, very prepared every day. He was thrilling to work with, and I know, sometimes, he’s his worst enemy. But he loves to… not provoke others. Everybody thinks that’s what his deal is. But I think he provokes himself. He tries to figure stuff out, and he’s very hard on himself. He doesn’t have a reputation for it, but he’s a very dear, passionate, caring person.

When people see you in roles like that, many people would describe you as a fearless actor. Do you question some of the places you go to in films like Antichrist?

No. Usually, it’s an actor’s job to give yourself to something. You want to get to that place where you forget yourself. I believe you can do your best work when you don’t only follow your agenda, or your taste, or your sense of what you think is correct. I think you have to get out of that. Otherwise, you’re just showing off. There’s nothing wrong with being an entertainer –an entertainer is a great thing. But I aspire to going beyond entertainment, and really imagining and shifting our thinking. So many of our problems, personally and politically and internationally, have to do with identity, and people being stuck with things that have no relationship to reality. Every time you check in to somebody else’s reality; every time you consider another way of being, it gives you the possibility to be more open-hearted and more open-minded. And, with that, you can problem-solve better. You can be kinder. And you can be calmer.

The Florida Project was afilm that asked for empathy with others and was a critical and awards success. What attracted you to that?

I love what Sean Baker does. He goes some place, and he embeds himself in that place, and lives in that place, and learns how to tell that story through the people that are there. And that is exactly what happened in The Florida Project. We shot in an actual place, and it was really those people there that taught us how to tell the story. Because you can’t make a bullshit story if you’re living with them, and we basically were. The beautiful thing for me is also dealing with non-actors. I tried not to be an actor. I tried to remove that stink of being an actor [laughs], and tried to be a good manager of a hotel. It’s not really a Method thing; it’s doing the things that they do, and to not spin it. Be there for it. Know how those people really live. So you

slipstream in their lives, and you try to remain true to what you’re saying.

We mentioned Robert Eggers earlier –your first experience working with him was The Lighthouse. Did you and Robert Pattinson push each other creatively? I don’t necessarily like any kind of built-in conflict. Some people encourage that. I’m not sure that works. But at the same time, the times where I’ve been involved in casting people around me, I’ve never wanted to do it. I don’t want to choose my partners. I want to be handed a partner, and to deal with it. Because I think when you choose your partners, and you feel too comfortable, maybe you won’t get pushed, you won’t find something out. So maybe a little tension is good, but I don’t think you should invent that, you know? And in the case of The Lighthouse, that was just practical. I didn’t really know Robert, and then, in the end, we got along very well. But we had different ways of working, and that actually helped because it helped to create the difference in the generation of the characters, and the different ways that they lived their lives. Plus, the way that we were shooting, it was so miserable that we barely talked to each other, you know? You go to get warm, and you go to survive, because we were really out in the elements. And then you do the scene.

You’ve just finished filming Nosferatu with Eggers, having appeared in Shadow of the Vampire previously. Was part of the attraction to look at that story from a different angle?

They’re so different, I don’t even make the connection.

I’ve made more than one vampire movie, you know? The look and the intention are very different. I think Robert and [cinematographer] Jarin [Blaschke] were in a very good place, and he’s getting more and more refined. It’s a bigger scale –maybe not quite as big as The Northman, but hewas very on top of it. I just saw some pieces, and I didn’t get a sense of the film itself, but it was just beautifully photographed. I can’t think of another film that quite looks like it.

‘LARS VON TRIER WAS THRILLING TO WORK WITH ’

You also appear in Olmo Schnabel’s Pet Shop Days. You’ve worked with his father, but is it important to support young filmmakers coming through?

It’s not so much, ‘Oh, I’m going to help him.’ He can help me, too. I really mean that. I think when people work for a while, they really have to be careful of a certain kind of corruption. As you get further down the line, and you’ve had more experiences, something can harden in you. When you work with younger people, or people that are just starting, there’s an excitement, and there’s a sense that you can return to it with them. There’s some older directors that really struggle because they’ve seen better days, and they think, ‘Wow, it’s so hard to make a movie now. It used to be so much more fun.’ No names, but that’s a real reality in older people.

I don’t want to be an actor in that way.

And then there’s Beetlejuice 2… Listen, Tim Burton, when you think about the movies he’s done, he has contributed so much, and many of his movies are fantastic. I was very pleased that he asked me to do something in that. And something that was fun, and not a bullshit cameo or something. Something that was substantial.

You’re so prolific and your projects are so varied. Are you looking for something you haven’t done yet or do you make choices based on whatever sets you on fire at the time?

I think so –the latter. You don’t know what you need until you get there. You do smell things out. You do try to make certain things happen. But I always feel like perhaps it’s why I’m not a director. If I see something too clearly, or I want too badly to share it, it’s complete. It’s done, a little bit. I’m always looking for the part that I don’t know. I like to collaborate. I don’t like the full responsibility of knowing what stuff means [laughs]. I enjoy being there. I’m a good soldier, but no general…

POOR THINGS IS IN CINEMAS 12 JANUARY.

TRUNK/CHARLIE GRAY, ALAMY

‘I LOV E THIS PLACE AT NIGHT. THE STA RS. THERE’S NO RIGHT OR W RONG IN THEM. THEY’RE J UST THERE.’

SGT. ELIAS PLATOON

WILLEM DAFOE LINE READING

‘I’ll tear your fuckin’ heart out, girl!’ BOBBY PERU WILD AT HEART

‘ OH. THE SCRIPT GIRL. I’LL EAT HER LATER.’

MAX SCHRECK SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE