Name: Willem Dafoe Breaks Down His Career, from 'The Boondock Saints' to 'Spider-Man' | Vanity Fair
Uploaded: 2020-03-11T10:52:14.000Z
Duration: 17 min 13 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I am William Dafoe, and this is the timeline of my career.

Adverbs of frequency

I never really decided I wanted to be an actor.

Past simple

I always kind of thought I'd end up doing something differently.

And then enough time past where I thought, I guess I'm an actor.

I went to school for a little while in acting program, but I dropped out very quickly, and I was reading about people like the Performance Group, the Manhattan Project, Great off ski Robert Wilson.

There was part of me that thought I was trying to be a traditional actor, but I kept on finding myself going downtown, going to loft performance's scene dance, and I got involved with a company called the Wooster Group that I ended up being with for 27 years.

My first IMDb credit is Heaven Escape, but that was very particular situation.

Someone said, you know, they're making this movie and it's Michael Cimino, and the Deer Hunter came out.

I thought it was great and they're looking for ethnic faces.

The audition was you did one monologue in English, and then you did another language.

So I had a friend of mine fanatically right out that speech in Dutch.

They just assumed I was fluent in Dutch, so when I got there, should be no asks.

May be improvising the same talked me through the whole scene and he says, Okay.

And in Dutch and I'm like, I don't speak Dutch.

I was in lighting setup and someone told me a joke.

Heard me laugh and he turned around and said, William, step out And that was it.

So I don't really count that as my first movie, although if you look hard enough, you will see me.

Don't you think I would get out of here while you do that?

The first movie that I really made that I have a substantial role in was the Loveless.

Kathryn Bigelow and Monty Montgomery saw me at the Wooster Group, and they asked me whether I wanted to make a movie.

I'm attracted to strong directors or turned directors, directors that really need to do something.

They take you to places that you can't go by yourself.

I'm interested in helping on artists Do what they need to do there, behind the camera, they need someone to be there, Creature on the color in the canvas.

Putin was a movie that took a long time to get made.

All of the stone saw lots of actors because he first just wanted to cast a group of actors and then decide what characters they would play later.

He said, Yeah, okay, you're you're gonna be in this movie.

I don't know which role, which was kind of an interesting approach.

I arrived in the Philippines and my plane was the last plane in because there was a revolution.

The movie's canceled will get you out when we can sew for about three or four days.

May and a couple of other people that were there ahead of time.

We're out on the streets with the people, and it was an incredible feeling because it was a revolution that happened for the most part, without violence.

They got the movie back on track and we made it.

The fact that that death scene in Platoon has become iconic as I was doing it, it felt special.

But that doesn't necessarily guarantee it's gonna be iconic.

All the elements came together, and I was just part of that.

When you talk about task oriented acting, it sounds like maybe that is an emotional, but it's very emotionally.

I know that I'm going to die at a certain point.

But once you engage, it wasthe like practicing a death.

I remember very well the first time I was nominated for an Academy Award.

I didn't even know when they were announcing nominations.

My son's baby sitter called me up, and that's what you've been nominated for an Academy Award with Move faster.

Remember, we're bringing God and man together.

There was a long search to find Jesus, and I wasn't involved in any of that.

Almost every actor I know at one point went in on this movie.

Hate Martin Scorsese wants to talk to you.

So of course I went to New York and said, Absolutely, I'd love to do it He said, Let's do it when you're being crucified This flood of emotion comes to a flood of association comes to It's a very powerful thing.

And when we shooting in Morocco, there was nothing else.

It was exploring something that had to do with spirituality.

I didn't anticipate the problems that happened.

I think that was a particular time politically, that the religious right needed on issue to kind of circle their troops around.

Venue is out wild at heart was a great experience because that role kind of did itself.

David Lynch, like, you know, brought out a hangar at one point and said, Will, this is your costume and that was it.

He also said, We've got to get you an appointment with the dentist and I said Why?

I read the script and it said he had bad teeth, but it shows really how actors put limitations on themselves.

Sometimes I never thought we were gonna do double dentures.

I put them in my mouth and I can close my mouth properly.

Anybody go like this, you're going to feel the service and like you're hungry, like you want some and you're gonna with some people that became a key slicked hair accent.

I read it in a parked car down the street.

He's basically a bartender in the like movies, and he thought, Well, I could make better movies than when I'm saying so.

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Willem Dafoe Breaks Down His Career, from 'The Boondock Saints' to 'Spider-Man' | Vanity Fair

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