David Lynch on the most “flawlessly perfect” performance in one of his movies: “Nailed it”
When you sit down to watch a David Lynch film, you know that you’re getting yourself in for several things, like some strangely surreal sequences that’ll have you questioning the entire movie, a great soundtrack – likely the sounds of Angelo Badalamenti – and, of course, some incredible performances to anchor it all down.
Every Lynch film is buoyed by the kinds of performances that any aspiring actor surely dreams of emulating, and it feels like an impossible task to try and highlight just one in his entire oeuvre that stands out as the greatest, because who can forget Dennis Hopper’s terrifying turn as Frank Booth in Blue Velvet?
When the actor was offered the part, he knew he’d stumbled upon something special, and no one else could possibly play the psychotic criminal. “I really understood Frank. I didn’t have a problem with Frank. I understood. I just understood him,” he told NPR.
How can you even pick just one actor to celebrate as the greatest from Twin Peaks, too? The series is jam-packed with incredible performances, from Sheryl Lee’s affecting portrayal of Laura Palmer to Kyle MacLachlan’s effortlessly charming Dale Cooper – the perfect lead.
With so many stars returning to work with Lynch throughout his career, it’s clear that he was an actor’s director, knowing exactly how to get what he needed from them by fostering a nurturing and creatively fulfilling environment, and he wasn’t this cinematic tyrant who got what he needed through fear and intimidation – Lynch’s film sets were quite the opposite.
So, even when he needed performances that were unsettling, he got them through relationships of trust, and there’s one he once circled out as the most “flawlessly perfect”. Lynch crafted many kinds of individuals that you probably wouldn’t want to meet in real life, and besides Frank Booth, one of the biggest contenders for the title of ‘most horrifying character in a David Lynch film’ would have to be Bobby Peru from Wild at Heart.
“I’ve gotta say that Willem [Dafoe] gave a flawlessly perfect performance from start to finish,” the director admitted in Lynch on Lynch, “Bobby Peru was a one-of-a-kind character and Willem nailed it like nobody’s business!”
Wild at Heart is a kaleidoscopic journey through love and criminality, with Laura Dern and Nicolas Cage playing a couple, Lula and Sailor, who take off after Lula’s mother sets a hitman on their case. She doesn’t want her daughter hanging about with a man with a dodgy past, but this only makes them stronger. Across their road trip, they meet various seedy characters, but none more so than Bobby, with his gross little teeth, which he bears despite their rotting appearance.
Dafoe’s performance here is truly unnerving, because you never know what Bobby is going to do, and we know he’s bad from the moment the camera lays eyes on him, but it’s hard to tell what he’s capable of, and with a scary level of confidence, he swaggers into Lula’s motel room and assaults her, and it’s one of the most horrific scenes in the entire film.
Dafoe blends darkness with comedy here, which makes him all the more terrifying. There’s something innately hilarious about seeing Dafoe looking like this – his hair slicked back and a pencil-thin moustache framing his decaying teeth – but this is swiftly undercut with sheer horror; his character is pure evil.
