Willem Dafoe’s crucial advice for young actors
American actor Willem Dafoe has always been dedicated to the craft of acting, finding his start as a member of the experimental theatre company, The Wooster Group. Despite finding a successful Hollywood career beginning in the 1980s, Dafoe continued to work with the group for decades, a testament to his love of acting as an art form.
Dafoe’s first role was an uncredited part in Heaven’s Gate before landing the lead in Kathryn Bigelow’s The Loveless in 1981. After a few years of appearing in relatively small films, he earned his breakthrough with a performance in Oliver Stone’s Platoon in 1986, which gave him his first Academy Award nomination.
Two years later, Dafoe landed the lead role of Jesus in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, a controversial film that gave him further recognition. Since then, Dafoe has worked in various genres, although he often collaborates with the same directors, like Abel Ferrara, Lars von Trier and Wes Anderson. He has moved between blockbusters and action flicks such as Spider-Man, Finding Nemo and John Wick, and independent and subversive titles like Antichrist, Wild At Heart and The Florida Project.
Thus, Dafoe has demonstrated considerable range, able to terrify, endear and invoke laughter, shapeshifting with every role. Following his first Academy Award nomination, Dafoe has been recognised by the Oscars on three more occasions, although he has never taken a golden statuette home. Still, he has earned two Independent Spirit Awards, including one for his role in The Lighthouse.
While every actor could tell you a thing or two about their craft, Dafoe is especially keen to give advice to budding stars, even teaching several acting workshops throughout his career. In an interview with Off Camera, the actor shared some of the crucial advice he gives to his students.
“I just try to experiment, you know, try to get them off their game and then have them find what it feels like to be off their game, to throw them off balance a little bit, but not in a mean way.” He added, “People come with lots of stuff, lots of armour, lots of habits, lots of method, lots of this, and they want to dump it on you.”
Dafoe continued, “It’s all kind of tied to fear and to ego and all this stuff, and you want to try to clean them out, let them be free, and if they can get free of that, then they get excited, and they have these kind of revelations, and then stuff happens.”
The actor also highlighted the way that art often emerges from fear and the unknown, which we need to embrace. Dafoe said, “We’re so conditioned not to play, and we’re so conditioned not to be loose. […] We’re not comfortable with things that we can’t quite explain, but those are usually the most beautiful things in a performance and the most beautiful things in any art, so we’re traumatised because somewhere, intuitively, we know that’s where we want to go.”
