Why Willem Dafoe went to mortician school for latest role

Dafoe’s versatility, which has become a defining hallmark of his career, has allowed him to carve out one of the most eclectic CVs in Hollywood. Though his filmography contains several big-budget roles, he has consistently gravitated towards challenging parts, while balancing blockbuster fare. He says he thrives on difficult roles.

“I feel best when I’m going towards something that I don’t know, because then I feel confident that something is really happening. I’m having an experience. And that’s when you’re free. And when the elements around you support that, you can make something that’s not bullshit and is meaningful and reflects some sort of truth.”

His services are still in high demand and he’s not planning to slow down anytime soon.

“I’ve worked a lot lately, and they’ve all been interesting things. So, I’m grateful for that because there’s always that fear that things will dry up or people will want you to repeat things that you’ve done before.

“But, I’ve been able to mix it up enough that I can maintain that feeling that every time I start something, I’m just thinking about that. And as long as you’re doing that and you’re enjoying that, I think that’s a good sign.”

Dafoe has visited Australia many times and says he has a deep affinity with the country. In 2001, he was in Melbourne for a Wooster theatre production. In 2009, he was on the Gold Coast shooting vampire film Daybreakers with Ethan Hawke and Sam Neill. Then in 2017, he was back for Aquaman. He has also provided narration for two environmental documentaries by Australian filmmaker Jennifer Peedom: Mountain (2017) and River (2021).

He got to know Tasmania intimately while playing a mercenary hired to find the last Tasmanian tiger in Australian director Daniel Nettheim’s 2011 thriller The Hunter. He says he fell in love with the Apple Isle’s culture and incredible landscapes as a result.

“Tasmanian food was fantastic. The wine was fantastic. And, of course, it’s a land of strange animals where we were shooting. We were on their turf, and it was beautiful.”

Although Dafoe is considered one of Hollywood’s most hardworking, eminent actors, having made more than 100 features, a career as a performer was not on the cards when he was growing up.

His father was a surgeon and his mother was a nurse and they guided him towards a medical career. Dafoe was the sixth-born child of eight; he had five older sisters and two younger brothers, and he only took up acting as a way to socialise.

“As a child I was groomed to follow my father’s footsteps. I went on hospital rounds with him often. He showed me medical procedures and books. I worked as a janitor in his clinic, but when I became an adolescent, I started enthusiastically doing theatre.”

Acting quickly become his life’s passion. Dafoe studied theatre at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee but dropped out after two years. In 1976, he arrived in New York and was drawn to the avant-garde theatre scene.

The following year, Dafoe began dating theatre director Elizabeth LeCompte, with whom he had a 27-year relationship, and one child, Jack. (He is now married to Italian filmmaker Giada Colagrande.) LeCompte co-formed the seminal experimental theatre troupe The Wooster Group, in which Dafoe was a core member, through the early 2000s.

While he may have begun as a struggling theatre actor living hand-to-mouth, Dafoe’s Hollywood career took off after he scored his first lead role, as the leader of an outlaw motorcycle gang, in Kathryn Bigelow’s debut film in 1982: The Loveless.

He portrayed a biker gang leader again, in Walter Hill’s Streets of Fire (1984). But his breakthrough role was as Sergeant Elias Grodin in Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986), for which he received his first Oscar nomination. Lead roles followed in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and Alan Parker’s Mississippi Burning (1988).

Dafoe has worked with some of the most celebrated filmmakers of the past half-century. Among them are Paul Schrader, Abel Ferrara, David Cronenberg, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Spike Lee and David Lynch.

In recent years, Dafoe has worked with a new generation of filmmakers including Wes Anderson, Robert Eggers (three collaborations), Sean Baker and now Lanthimos. “I respond to the energy, curiosity, passion of younger directors finding their voice and vision,” he says.

For two decades, Dafoe has collaborated with Anderson and they have made five films together. One of his favourite things about the acclaimed director, he says, is Anderson’s meticulous attention to detail.

“I remember for Grand Budapest Hotel; he showed me a stick figure animatronic with his voice on all the characters. And it was so good. It was emotional. It was beautiful,” he recalls. “I was like, ‘Wes, pocket the budget and just release this thing,’ ” he adds with a laugh.

In the last six years, Dafoe has earned Oscar nominations for The Florida Project and At Eternity’s Gate, appeared in Asteroid City and The French Dispatch for Anderson, and played a crazed lighthouse keeper opposite Robert Pattinson in The Lighthouse.

For Dafoe, 2024 will be yet another busy year. He has a role in Eggers’ new feature, Nosferatu. He will star again with Emma Stone in Lanthimos’ next film, Kind of Kindness. There is a part in Beetlejuice 2. He says he is as determined as ever to take on challenging parts and push himself out of his comfort zone.

“You talk to someone that’s been around for a while and they’re like, ‘Don’t finish me off’. The best is yet to come. Not everything happens when you’re young. Let’s remember that.”

Poor Things opened on Boxing Day.