The movie that changed Willem Dafoe’s life
Few actors have honed a career as wide-spanning and varied as Wisconsin-born Willem Dafoe. His on-screen appearances have ranged from supervillains to army sergeants to lighthouse keepers in blockbuster franchises and cult independent films alike.
Dafoe rose to acclaim with an appearance as Sgt. Elias in Oliver Stone’s celebrated Vietnam War film Platoon, a role which earned him his first of four Academy Award nominations. He then went on to work with a number of beloved and cult directors, including Martin Scorsese on The Last Temptation of Christ and David Lynch on Wild at Heart.
With the dawn of the new century, Dafoe found himself in the early days of the superhero movie craze when he landed the role of Norman Osborn, or the Green Goblin, in Sam Raimi’s 2002 adaptation of Spider-Man. Starring alongside Tobey Maguire, who took on the title character, Dafoe featured in two sequels spanning the following five years. At the same time, he retained his place in cult cinema, working with Wes Anderson on The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and featuring in a number of Lars Von-Trier films, including Antichrist and Nymphomaniac.
Since then, Dafoe has retained this balance between the cult and the commercial. In 2021, he returned to his role as the Green Goblin in the most recent adaptation of Peter Parker’s story alongside Tom Holland. He has also maintained his place in indie cinema, featuring in the beloved A24-produced The Lighthouse alongside Robert Pattinson and Yorgos Lanthimos’ upcoming Poor Things.
Dafoe’s lengthy and wide-ranging career has seen him take on all kinds of films, but when asked which one changed his life the most in an interview with The Talks, Dafoe said, “Probably the first one, The Loveless.” Released in 1981, The Loveless saw the actor take on his first starring role, playing a biker named Vance. While exploring the options, the actor also named To Live and Die in L.A. as a possible answer.
Perhaps surprisingly, Dafoe recalls that Platoon, the film which expanded his audience and opportunities, actually made it hard to find the right roles: “Obviously Platoon, but it’s a little bit too obvious,” he said. “It changed a certain amount of recognition and gave me a different status for a while, but it also brought some problems. After Platoon, it was very hard to find good roles.”
Dafoe continued to explain the difficulty that came with the expansion of opportunity, stating: “You get everything offered to you, and nothing is right. And you get somehow overwhelmed. Although I don’t try to involve myself in regrets, there are some times when I think I should have kept it rolling. That’s what most people that are interested in movie careers do. Even if they fall on their face, once you get a break or a little attention, you should go, go, go, go!”
Dafoe also recalls that he was still working at a theatre at the time and wanted to wait for the right film, commenting: “I had a different kind of view of who I was and what I wanted to do, and I was really waiting for the perfect role after I got this kind of recognition. It didn’t come for a long time, and then I finally got tired of waiting, and I went back to work.”
Since then, his wide-spanning career has seen him take on many of the right roles and some of the wrong ones (his performance opposite Madonna in the 1993 erotic thriller Body of Evidence was met with more ridicule than acclaim). Still, Dafoe has outnumbered his misses with hits, and his openness to working across genres has earned him a place as one of the most celebrated and versatile actors working today.
