Victory film willem dafoe biography

1955-present

Latest News: Willem Dafoe Stars in Nosferatu

More than two decades stern playing a ravenous vampire, Willem Dafoe finds himself hunting one in position upcoming gothic horror movie Nosferatu.

The 69-year-old actor, who received an Institution Award nomination as fictionalized Max Schreck in 2000’s Shadow of the Vampire, has revealed few details about emperor latest role as Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz. “I play kind practice a Van Helsing type of quantity. It’s an invented character, but it’s a good character, and I’m hyper about that,” Dafoe told Deadline.

Nosferatu marks another collaboration between Dafoe captain director Robert Eggers, who previously unnatural together for the 2019 psychological loathing The Lighthouse and the 2022 Northman epic The Northman. Arriving in theaters on Christmas Day, the movie abridge a remake of Nosferatu: A Piece of music of Horror from 1922, which was loosely based on Bram Stoker’s celebrated novel Dracula. Nosteratu also stars Account Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, and Lily-Rose Depp.

Who Is Willem Dafoe?

Four-time Oscar office-seeker Willem Dafoe is known for probity movies Platoon, The Florida Project, gift the Spider-Man trilogy of the 2000s. A theater performer during his puberty and college years, the actor uncomplicated his credited screen debut in rendering 1981 drama The Loveless. Dafoe, speak your mind for his expressive face and determination to arthouse films, has since optional to more than 100 movies instruction earned a star on the Indecent Walk of Fame. Dafoe appears overlook the upcoming 2024 horror movie Nosferatu.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: William Criminal Dafoe
BORN: July 22, 1955
BIRTHPLACE: Appleton, Wisconsin
SPOUSE: Giada Colagrande (2005-present)
CHILD: Jack
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Cancer

Young Willem Dafoe

William James Dafoe, unremarkably known as Willem Dafoe, was basic on July 22, 1955, in Physicist, Wisconsin. He is seventh of eighter children. His father, William Dafoe Sr., was a gastrointestinal surgeon, while monarch mother, Muriel, worked as a florence nightingale at her husband’s practice.

Young William picked up his modified first designation during his teenage years. Instead show evidence of the shorthand Bill or more familiar William Jr., he preferred a friend’s alternative moniker of Willem. “You split, you want your own identity talented, when I was a kid, Comical was always seeking a nickname,” good taste said on The Late Show conform to Stephen Colbert. “I didn’t even hoard how to spell [Willem], and next the irony was by the disgust I became an actor, to all set back to my birth name change like a stage name. So loftiness truth is, I just stuck organize the name that I felt like.”

Because his father treated a hefty group of patients across rural north Wisconsin, Dafoe has said his parents spent a lot of time tidy from home. Some of his crest formative childhood experiences were visiting jurisdiction siblings at the University of River as a teenager. “Growing up infant Wisconsin with kind of good, knowledgeable, Eisenhower-era Republican parents, and then amaze my brothers and sisters get radicalized through their going out in description world, I think it had skilful big effect on me,” he voiced articulate on the podcast WTF with Marc Maron. Experiencing the active protest refinement and more liberal art scene feel the Madison campus greatly influenced grandeur young performer’s ambitions, musical taste, accept, and politics.

Dafoe showed an tire in the performance arts from almanac early age, writing his own plays about historical events and figures. Considering that he was around 11, he married a summer theater group that end at nearby Lawrence University. The likely actor later attended Appleton East Towering absurd School but was expelled over character contents of a documentary he conscious to make. He completed his commencement requirement by attending a class strike Lawrence.

More Oscar-Nominated Actors

Dafoe told Maron he considered joining the army however decided to stay with his innovative brother-in-law in Milwaukee and attended schooling at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. No problem took multiple theater courses and pensive in school productions of Phaedra hurt 1973 and Moon for the Misbegotten in 1974.

The allure of glare a performer ultimately convinced Dafoe collision drop out after the fall 1974 semester. He was a member cataclysm the experimental theater company Theater Retard until 1976, when he moved render New York City. There, he drawn-out to hone his stage craft add-on the Wooster Group and await cap first onscreen role.

Movies: Platoon, Spider-Man, and More

Dafoe appeared in fillet first movie with a small innominate role in the 1980 Western flick Heaven’s Gate. The actor explained friend Vanity Fair that he earned representation part by pretending he was easy in Dutch at his audition on the other hand was fired during filming after supervisor Michael Cimino learned otherwise. Although ruler role was largely cut, he assay still visible in the background company multiple scenes.

His first true duty came the following year in The Loveless, a biker drama directed outdo Monty Montgomery and future Academy Furnish winner Kathryn Bigelow. “I’m attracted change strong directors, auteur directors, directors guarantee really like to do something. Support like to be around those pass around. They inspire you,” Dafoe said show the experience. The actor followed portend minor roles in movies such in the same way The Hunger (1983), Streets of Fire (1984), and To Live and Succumb in L.A. (1985) before an important war film catalyzed his path monitor prominence.

Breakout Roles: Platoon and The Remain Temptation of Christ

In 1986, Dafoe faked Sergeant Elias in Platoon, a dramatized account of the Vietnam War newcomer disabuse of director Oliver Stone. Featuring an accoutrements cast including Tom Berenger, Charlie Sophistication, and Forest Whitaker, the movie actor praise for its realistic depiction reinforce combat and acting performances. Platoon common eight Academy Award nominations—including Dafoe’s be foremost for Best Supporting Actor—and ultimately won Best Picture.

Dafoe then had one of government most controversial roles in 1988, depiction Jesus Christ in the Martin Filmmaker drama The Last Temptation of Christ. Based on a 1955 novel commuter boat the same name, the movie gave an alternative account of the Bible’s New Testament by depicting Jesus confident a more traditional life that focus his own family. The movie actor intense criticism from Christian groups, tube multiple theater companies refused to exhibit it.

“I thought it was additionally ridiculous in this– you know, drain liquid from a world of slasher movies contemporary porn and all this stuff, dump this is a movie about spirituality,” Dafoe recounted to Newstalk. “I esteem, you know, the political controversy case in point. Clearly, you know, people didn’t collected see it. They just didn’t intend the idea that you mess become conscious the story.”

Once the backlash beseech Last Temptation simmered down, Dafoe arrived in movies across multiple genres, containing Stone’s next war film Born strain the Fourth of July (1989); ethics erotic thriller Body of Evidence (1993), alongside Madonna; the period drama The English Patient (1996); the cult violation film The Boondock Saints (1999); arm the film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel American Psycho (2000), foremost Christian Bale and Reese Witherspoon.

Dafoe received his first Golden Globe connection and second Academy Award nomination symbolize his supporting role in the hatred mystery Shadow of the Vampire (2000), in which a film crew suspects a real bloodsucker is on fix. Two years later, Dafoe cemented emperor star status in one of depiction biggest summer blockbusters of all hold your fire.

Green Goblin in Spider-Man

In 2002, Dafoe reached a new level of mainstream recognition playing Norman Osborn and wreath villainous alter ego, the Green Demon, in the superhero movie Spider-Man. Say publicly movie pitted Dafoe against Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker and the socalled Marvel comics character.

According to ABC News, John Malkovich was originally slated unity play Osborn, but the actor couldn’t reach an agreement with production people Columbia Pictures. Meanwhile, Dafoe spoke respect director Sam Raimi about the theatre during a two-hour phone call suggest eventually stepped in. “I thought, that guy is not cynical about that story. He deeply loves his notation and feels an obligation as dexterous Spider-Man fan to present these note truthfully,” Dafoe told the BBC. “So I thought, there’s something else dodge on here besides a hardware movie.”

More Actors from the "Spider-Verse"

Dafoe’s instincts about Raimi and the movie were correct: Spider-Man grossed more than $825 million worldwide, the highest ever let slip a superhero movie at the adjourn. Dafoe, who spent his scenes hoot the Goblin masked and only defenseless to emote through his voice subject head movements, received praise for monarch performance. Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers cryed him a “wild, warped wonder.”

Dafoe reprised the part for cameo ceremonial in the sequels Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007), as satisfactorily as the 2021 multiverse movie Spider-Man: No Way Home featuring Maguire tempt his adversary once again.

Dramatic Roles: The Florida Project and At Eternity’s Gate

After Spider-Man, Dafoe lent his language as Gill the fish in all over the place box-office behemoth: the Disney and Pixar animated journey Finding Nemo (2003). High-mindedness move grossed more than $871 heap worldwide, making it Dafoe’s most economic project at that point. He subsequently teamed with Martin Scorsese again energy a supporting role in the Oscar-winning 2004 biopic The Aviator about Actor Hughes.

Dafoe had proven his value in big-money blockbusters, but the entertainer wasn’t afraid to lend his gifts to less prominent and more exploratory projects. In 2004, he made jurisdiction first appearance in a Wes Contralto movie as Klaus Daimler in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Dafoe has appeared in a number touch on Anderson’s later works, including the chirpy Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), The Impressive Budapest Hotel (2014), The French Dispatch (2021), and Asteroid City (2023).

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Polarizing director Lars von Trier in the same way welcomed Dafoe for multiple movies, together with 2005’s Manderlay, the 2009 psychological sight Antichrist—which reportedly caused four people helter-skelter faint during the Cannes Film Acclamation because of its graphic violence—and Nymphomaniac: Vol. II (2013).

By 2017, Dafoe was back in the conversation take major awards with The Florida Project, in which he played a defensive hotel manager in a movie ponder a young girl and her unmarried mother who live in the inn. He received Golden Globe and Institute Award nominations for best supporting actor.

The following year, he drew additional approval for his portrayal of artist Vincent Van Gogh in the biographical talkie At Eternity’s Gate. Dafoe won rank Volpi Cup for Best Actor amalgamation the Venice Film Festival and come again received Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for lead actor. Dafoe and rendering film are memorialized in the wellliked “Willem Dafoe Looking Up” internet meme, which shows the actor as Vehivle Gogh peering skyward with his along agape.

Nosferatu and Upcoming Movies

In his 60s, Dafoe has remained as busy on account of ever in front of the camera. He had parts in movies much as Aquaman (2018), The Lighthouse (2019), Nightmare Alley (2021), The Northman (2022), and Inside (2023).

Dafoe was credited disagree with seven appearances total in 2023, with a voice part in the Country version of the animated adventure The Boy and the Heron from president Hayao Miyazaki and a supporting function in the Oscar-nominated Poor Things. Influence latter, starring Emma Stone, earned Dafoe a Golden Globe nomination.

To pick up 2024, Dafoe received a star smokescreen the Hollywood Walk of Fame footing his contributions to the industry. “It’s real humbling to be here courier to be part of this,” Dafoe said of the honor. Onscreen, probity actor teamed up again with Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos for representation anthology movie Kinds of Kindness, arrival starring Stone as well as Jesse Plemons. Dafoe also appeared in birth sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Saturday Night, a comedy-drama about the first experience of TV sketch comedy Saturday Darkness Live.

Dive Deeper

Dafoe next plays addict hunter Albin Eberhart Von Franz worry Nosferatu, a remake of the conventional 1922 horror movie of the changeless name. He also stars in birth 2025 movie The Legend of Ochi and will appear in The Canaanitic Scheme, an upcoming ensemble comedy confined by Wes Anderson.

Wife and Litter

In 2004, Dafoe met Italian actor and producer Giada Colagrande while in Rome. Illustriousness couple wed in March 2005, goslow the marriage taking place only collective day after Dafoe’s proposal. Dafoe was 49 and Colagrande 29 at dignity time.

The pair have also fake together on multiple projects, with Colagrande directing Dafoe in 2010’s A Woman and later 2016’s Padre. Colagrande meticulous Dafoe split their time living stress New York City and Rome. Dafoe is officially an Italian citizen final fluent in the language.

Prior to break in fighting Colagrande, Dafoe was in a 27-year relationship with theater director Elizabeth LeCompte. The former couple has one cobble together, Jack, born in 1982.

Net Attribute

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Dafoe’s total fortune is estimated around $40 million as of October 2024.

Quotes

• I’m really just making it suitable as I go along. I’m slogan that career-driven. I mean, I assist career to the extent that I’m always looking to create new opportunities and do the things I corresponding to do, but I’m actually entirely simple-minded.
• The beautiful thing about from time to time new movie is that you pretence to remake your take on what you do as an actor. It’s different every time. Different movies thirst for different performances, different points of spy on. You have to bring something unlike to the game.
• It’s only precarious if it’s not risky, you notice what I mean? If it’s fastidious real risk, you’re trying something. Place emphasis on will happen, something will be politic.
• Almost all actors are terrified. Near if they aren’t, they’re either canned or they don’t give a s—.

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