The_Hollywood_Reporter__February_07_2018

Here is a typical day in the life
of Willem Dafoe: He wakes up
early, usually around 5 or 6. He
meditates, has a cup of coffee and
writes in his journal for a while.
Then he checks his email, does
some yoga and makes breakfast.
If he’s prepping for a film, which
he almost always is, he’ll go over
his lines for a couple of hours.
If he’s not, he’ll read a book, take
a walk around his West Village
neighborhood or — his favorite
activity of all — do some laundry.
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“It’s one of my great pleasures,” he says, dead
serious. “I love it so much, I have to resist the
urge to do a lot of hand washing when I’m in
hotels. Sometimes, when I’m in a strange
city, I go to laundromats. I did that in France
recently — I was shooting a movie there —
and it was a beautiful experience. For some
reason, people are really nice to me in laundromats
and I have these great encounters.
Talk about fun and sexy …”
Of course, what makes Dafoe different from
most people — aside from enjoying laundry
— is that in his life there’s really no such thing
as a typical day. Every one of them is pretty
unusual. Today, for instance, the 62-year-old
Oscar nominee — he’s up for best supporting
actor for his role in The Florida Project, A24’s
$2 million slice of life about kids from lowincome
families living in cheap motels near
Orlando’s Disney World — lounges on a shady
terrace at a hotel overlooking downtown
Santa Barbara, where he’s about to take another
lap around the awards season circuit as it
hurtles toward the finish line. He’s dressed
With Brooklynn Prince in The Florida Project.
in hipster casual — black jeans, white T-shirt
and a scruffy graying beard (a remnant from
his recent turn as Vincent Van Gogh in Julian
Schnabel’s upcoming biopic, At Eternity’s Gate)
— but in a few hours he’ll spruce himself up,
slip into a suit and step onto a stage to accept
the Santa Barbara Film Festival’s Vanguard
Award, honoring what the program calls his
“unique contributions to film.”
In Dafoe’s case, unique is putting it mildly.
He has played everybody from Jesus (in Martin
Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ) to
a tropical fish (in Finding Nemo). He shared a
foxhole with Charlie Sheen in Oliver Stone’s
1986 Vietnam War epic Platoon (which got
him his first Oscar nomination), wore 6-inchlong
fingernails and a prosthetic pointy head
to play silent film star Max Schreck in 2000’s
Shadow of the Vampire (which got him his
second) and zoomed around New York on a
flying hoverboard as the Green Goblin in
2002’s Spider-Man (and its two sequels). And
that’s just scratching the surface of his résumé
— there’s also his lesser-applauded performances
in 1993’s Body of Evidence (in which
Madonna dripped hot wax onto his naked
body) and in Lars von Trier’s 2009 drama
Antichrist (in which Charlotte Gainsbourg
crushed his testicles), along with a slew of
other roles big, small and occasionally completely
overlooked. Over the past 37 years,
Dafoe has racked up credits on more than 100
films, churning out two, three or sometimes
even four or more a year (last year, he did six,
a personal best, plus voiceover narrations on
two documentaries).
But here’s the thing about Willem Dafoe.
Despite his prodigious output and nearubiquitous
onscreen presence during the past
four decades, he’s never quite popped as a
full-fledged movie star. He’s gotten plenty of
nominations, and the critics adore him. But
nobody gossips about him. Photographers
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don’t camp outside his home (or even know
where it is). Fans let him wash his underpants
in peace at laundromats. Dafoe insists
he doesn’t want to be a bigger star than he
already is and prefers that nobody know about
his offscreen life. He says it makes it easier to
“disappear into roles.”
Still, disappearing isn’t exactly a winning
strategy when you’re up for an Academy Award.
So he slouches into his chair on his hotel terrace,
gives his gray beard a couple of tugs and,
for a few of hours anyway, lets a stranger rummage
in his laundry bag.
FOR STARTERS, HIS REAL NAME IS NOT WILLEM.
It’s William. As a teenager in Appleton,
Wisconsin, he was called Bill, or sometimes
Billy, and there was a period during his early
childhood when his older brothers teased him
with the nickname “Bleeblob” (for reasons
no family member will reveal but which they
hint are hugely embarrassing).
He was the seventh of eight children, all
crammed into an overstuffed colonial where
there was almost zero adult supervision.
PREVIOUS SPREAD: PROP STYLING BY KYLE SCHUNEMAN AT THE REX AGENCY. GROOMING BY SONIA LEE FOR ALBA1913 AT EXCLUSIVE ARTISTS. THIS SPREAD: FLORIDA: COURTESY OF A24. PLATOON:
ORION PICTURES/PHOTOFEST. SHADOW: LIONSGATE FILMS/PHOTOFEST. CHRIST: UNIVERSAL PICTURES/PHOTOFEST. SPIDER-MAN: COLUMBIA PICTURES/SONY PICTURES/PHOTOFEST.
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
56
FEBRUARY 7, 2018