Willem Dafoe -- Born: 1955-07-22. Occupation: actor. Education: Appleton East High School. Awards: Donostia Award.
Born1955-07-22
Occupationactor, film actor, film producer, model
EducationAppleton East High School, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
AwardsDonostia Award, Film Independent Spirit Awards, Honorary Golden Bear, Satellite Awards, Saturn Awards
Material current as of
Highlights
“That’s a part of his daily personhood on set. I mean, he’ll just start improvising songs and singing. He’s very physical. He’ll sort of dance in a moment on his own, without having been inspired to do it by anything or anyone. He’s a truly free person.”
indiewire.com2026-08-07Source“I mean this in such a positive way: He’s very unsentimental. There was never a sense that he was like, ‘You know what, kid? You’re going to be alright,'”
indiewire.com2026-08-07Source“He’s very relaxed. He has a sort of open-minded but easeful way about him. He’s a livewire too, though. And I don’t think you see that in the movie,”
indiewire.com2026-08-07Source“There is no precise meaning as the etymology can be vague or evocative,”
The Hollywood Reporter2026-03-23Source“The idea is to think ALTER as in change — NATIVE as your nature. Or ALTER as in other — NATIVE as the culture one is from.”
The Hollywood Reporter2026-03-23Source“Jesus rejects his job and lives as a normal man. He has children, he has sex. That was too scandalous for people, so even without seeing the movie, there were huge protests against it,”
The Hollywood Reporter2025-08-21Source“I like doing things. I like someone to say what they see, and then I like to try to embody it. I like doing things and embodying characters.… It challenges your perceptions, your prejudices.”
The Hollywood Reporter2025-08-21Source“You are not THE Jesus Christ. You are one Jesus Christ,”
The Hollywood Reporter2025-08-21Source“They complained about the idea of it, they hadn’t seen the movie. Jesus rejects his job and lives as a normal man; he has children, he has sex. That was scandalous for them.”
Screen Daily2025-08-21Source“Put any one of you up on a cross and you’d have an experience.”
Screen Daily2025-08-21Source“To play Jesus Christ you’ve got to remember you’re not the Jesus Christ, you’re a Jesus Christ.”
Screen Daily2025-08-21Source“Then it morphed into a strange thing about Jews in Hollywood and it snowballed. The perception was it was the Catholic church – it wasn’t, it was the fundamental right in America. It really did keep it from being wildly distributed.”
Screen Daily2025-08-21Source“I like doing the action stuff. When the first Spider-Man was made, we were still using wires – it’s very concrete, very tangible.”
Screen Daily2025-08-21Source“People say, ‘Don’t you want to direct?’ It’s like, Hell no! Because I’m not through with that performance stuff.”
TIME2019-10-31Source“The job is always different, and you’re always calibrating in relationship to the people, to how you’re feeling. It’s for that reason that I’ll never tire of performing,”
TIME2019-10-31SourceBrowse 19 more quotes
“It’s sort of the idea of American avant-garde theater, downtown theater,”
indiewire.com2026-08-07Source“If anything, he was more inquisitive and like, ‘What’s your experience been like with this or that? Or what do you want to do?'”
indiewire.com2026-08-07Source“to free myself of any images and expectation”
The Hollywood Reporter2025-08-21Source“There’s a grace in its simplicity,”
The Hollywood Reporter2025-08-21Source“you were still using wires,”
The Hollywood Reporter2025-08-21Source“It’s a beautiful way to play with testing your limitations.”
The Hollywood Reporter2025-08-21Source“The way it was constructed was very simple. It wasn’t really rehearsed,”
The Hollywood Reporter2025-08-21Source“There was less CGI, and it was fun because it’s athletic.”
The Hollywood Reporter2025-08-21Source“I had a simple task – run for my life. Some of the cameras were built into the ground. I’m running like hell, and detonating the bullets on me. It’s a pure technical task.”
Screen Daily2025-08-21Source“It was particularly driven by the religious right who needed something to get behind to energise their cause,”
Screen Daily2025-08-21Source“suffer fools, he could be very tough”
Screen Daily2025-08-21Source“The research creates an engagement, a relationship to the material,”
Screen Daily2025-08-21Source“was very unconventional, he was an artist,”
Screen Daily2025-08-21Source“The original Spider-Man was a lot of fun; within a scene it could switch from dramatic to comic like that,”
Screen Daily2025-08-21Source“He’s giving me material that excites me and turns me on,”
Screen Daily2025-08-21Source“He’d say very abstract things like ‘Willem, you know when you start this, you’re green, then you become brown’.”
Screen Daily2025-08-21Source“not going in the right direction”
Screen Daily2025-08-21Source“I’ve never seen a bluer sky,”
Screen Daily2025-08-21Source“The beauty of the way it was constructed was it was very simple,”
Screen Daily2025-08-21SourceIn the News
- collider.com · 2026-08-09
- NPR · 2026-08-08
- TIME · 2026-08-08
- indiewire.com · 2026-08-07
- variety.com · 2026-08-06
- deadline.com · 2026-08-04
- labiennale.org · 2026-06-21
- nytimes.com · 2025-05-28
- theguardian.com · 2025-05-13
- hollywoodreporter.com · 2025-03-28
- vulture.com · 2024-12-05
- variety.com · 2024-08-30
- labiennale.org · 2024-07-08
- apnews.com · 2024-07-08
- variety.com · 2024-01-08
- theguardian.com · 2024-01-07
- NPR · 2019-11-13
- TIME · 2019-10-31
- nymag.com · 2019-04-11
- vanityfair.com · 2014-06-24
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