FIVE STAR TURNS

PLATOON 1986

Dafoe’s Sgt. Elias is the conscience of Oliver Stone’s Oscar-winning Vietnam War movie. Of his character’s iconic death, Dafoe said, ‘I detonated my own charges on my body, and I knew where the explosions were on the ground.’

THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST

1988 ‘[Scorsese] wanted to tell the story from the human side of Jesus,’ said Dafoe of the controversial role he describes as his ‘most demanding’. When the actor wasn’t on set, he was reading the Bible.

SPIDER-MAN 2002

Dafoe had played his fair share of bad guys – notably Bobby Peru in Lynch’s Wild at Heart – and he aced it as the cackling Green Goblin. He also performed 90% of his own stunts. Surf’s up.

THE FLORIDA PROJECT 2017

Seventeen years after his last Oscar nom, for Shadow of the Vampire, Dafoe scored with Bobby, the motel manager who shelters a homeless mother and daughter. ‘My job was to fit in,’ he said of working with non-actors.

THE LIGHTHOUSE 2019

‘Yer fond of me lobster, ain’t ye?’ Dafoe lived in a fisherman’s cottage in solitude as he shot Robert Eggers’ bonkers tale of two 1890s lighthouse keepers losing their minds. The facial hair is all his own. JG