The_Hollywood_Reporter__February_07_2018

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WOOSTER: NANCY CAMPBELL/COURTESY OF SUBJECT. COLAGRANDE: MICHAEL KOVAC/GETTY IMAGES FOR MOET & CHANDON.
Dafoe never had the face of
a leading man — “I’m like the
boy next door, if you live next
door to a mausoleum,” he once
said of himself — but even
in his 20s and 30s he had the
right bone structure and wild
intensity to play villains, like
the counterfeiter in William
Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A.
He was even talked about for the
Joker in 1989’s Batman, until Jack Nicholson
snagged the role. “[Screenwriter Sam] Hamm
said something about how physi cally I would
be perfect for the part,” Dafoe recalls, “but they
never offered it to me.”
It was a much more angelic character
that would put him on Hollywood’s radar.
“Originally, the part was supposed to be
for a Native American,” says Oliver Stone of
Sgt. Gordon Elias, the kindly G.I. who gets
riddled with machine gun fire in a rice paddy
at the end of Platoon. “But we couldn’t find
a Native American actor for the part. So we
changed the character to white and looked
around for an actor who had a different sort
of face. We didn’t want to cast a classically
handsome actor.” Stone, who later cast Dafoe
in Born on the Fourth of July opposite classically
handsome Tom Cruise, believes it’s
precisely because of Dafoe’s unusual features
(The New York Times once described his face
as looking like a “demiurge as rendered by a
cubist”) that he’s had such a durable career.
“He’s not a movie star,” Stone says. “He’s not
good looking in that way. But that’s why he’s
still working. He hasn’t fallen into the movie
star trap. He’s stayed an actor.”
After his nomination for Platoon, Dafoe
was offered just about everything — and, judging
from his rambling credits, he didn’t turn
much away. Dafoe gives lots of reasons for why
he picks the projects he does — “Sometimes
it can be a very simple thing, like, ‘Wow, I
want to ride that motorcycle and wear those
clothes’ ” — but in truth it’s not always easy
to discern a guiding logic behind his choices.
He’s the kind of actor who can shoot a highbrow
drama like 1997’s Affliction one month
and turn around and make Speed 2: Cruise
Control the next. “Oh, I turn down things,” he
insists. “I won’t say which ones, because that’s
not nice to the people I’ve turned down.”
As he’s grown older, Dafoe’s pace hasn’t
slowed. In the past year, he’s starred in Kenneth
Branagh’s remake of Murder on the Orient
Express; done a dystopian thriller called What
Happened to Monday; nearly appeared in Justice
League (his underwater scenes as Nuidis
Vulko got cut from the final print, but he’ll be
back as the character this year in Aquaman);
learned to paint like Van Gogh (Schnabel was
his personal tutor); and, of course, performed
his nominated turn as the father-figure motel
manager who looks after his downwardly
1 Dafoe (left) with
Spalding Gray and
other Wooster Group
actors in 1979.
2 With his wife,
director Giada
Colagrande, in 2018.
mobile tenants in The Florida Project, a film
that had him practicing his craft with a
parking lot full of 6-year-olds and first-time
actors. “When I cast Willem, everyone was
like, ‘Oh no, he’s a villain, he’s a bad guy,’ ”
says director Sean Baker, whose most famous
previous work was his 2015 iPhone-shot
Tangerine. “But Willem made the character
his own. He came down to Florida a week
early and picked out his wardrobe — he’s the
one who came up with the sunglasses —
and met with actual hotel managers around
the area, looking for inspiration. And he was
great with the kids. Very casual with everyone.
Very approachable. He never played the diva.”
For Dafoe, working with children was a bit
like experimental theater. “Since the movie is
from the kids’ point of view, you have to invite
the chaos,” he says. “The biggest challenge
was to stay calm and be patient. I was ready to
grab the wheel if we were going to crash, but [I]
had to let the kids drive [the movie].”
Dafoe doesn’t chew any scenery or have
any over-the-top outbursts in The Florida
Project — on the contrary, he gives such a
quiet, low-key performance that his acting is
practically invisible. That makes it a surprising
choice for the Academy, which usually
nominates more robust roles. Dafoe himself
seems a little taken aback by all the attention.
Or maybe it’s just that it’s been a while since
his last go-around on the awards circuit and
he’s feeling out of practice. “It’s changed so
much since my first nomination,” he says of
this year’s race. “It’s so much more developed
and sophisticated, with a lot more outlets. My
first nomination for Platoon, I didn’t even have
a publicist. I didn’t even know what day they
Find out what Dafoe’s 7-year-old co-star Brooklynn Prince taught him at THR.COM/VIDEO
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were announcing the nominations. My son’s
babysitter called to tell me I was nominated.”
One change he particularly likes, though, is
the rise of the #MeToo movement. “I’ve worked
with a lot of women directors,” he points out.
“My wife is a female director. I see the inequalities.
I see how difficult it is. And it’s having an
effect on me because I can see how things are
shifting. When I read scripts now, red flags
go off sometimes. Like, if I’m reading a script
and all the women are taking off their clothes,
I’m like, ‘OK, what is this?’ What can I say? I’m
being educated.”
“I LIVE A NOMADIC LIFE,” DAFOE OBSERVES,
nodding at the leafy surroundings of the
hotel terrace. “Last year it was five months
in Australia, two months in England, three
months in France …”
He and his wife have homes in New York
and Rome, but he rarely spends more than a
month or two at either. For most of the year,
he’s on the road, hopping from one film set
to the next. Sometimes his wife travels with
him, sometimes not (“She is my home,” he
says). But the constant movement has given
Dafoe a unique sense of continuity. While
the rest of the world measures their lives in
moments — birthdays, anniversaries, weddings,
deaths — he measures his in film
productions. “I remember my life by my movies,”
he says.
Later in the day, at the Arlington Theater in
Santa Barbara, a couple hundred people turn
out — including his two brothers, who don’t
have nearly as fantastic hair but do bear a family
resemblance around the eyes — to watch
Dafoe get his Vanguard Award. Just before he
steps onstage, Dafoe gets to watch his whole
life-slash-movie-career flash before his eyes.
There’s a five-minute pre-ceremony clip reel
of his greatest moments. Or at least what
somebody thought were his greatest moments.
“They mostly showed my studio movies,” Dafoe
points out afterward, a little disappointed.
“They left out a lot of other films.”
Of course, a more complete reel would last
longer than one of von Trier’s movies. And
Dafoe is constantly adding titles. He reportedly
has signed on for an adaptation of Jonathan
Lethem’s crime novel Motherless Brooklyn, about
a 1950s detective with Tourette’s syndrome,
that Edward Norton (who’ll be directing as well
as starring in the lead role, with Dafoe playing
his brother) has been trying to get made
for years. “I’m always working on something,”
Dafoe says, demonstrating his gift for
understatement. “I don’t always know what’s
right for me, but I know what turns me on and
what makes me happy.”
It turns out there’s not much in Dafoe’s
anything-but-typical, laundry-loving life that
makes him unhappy these days.
“To tell you the truth,” he admits, “I’m not
crazy about folding.”
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
59
FEBRUARY 7, 2018