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Willem Dafoe
| Biography |
For nearly a century, one of the hot topics in cinema has been the greed and egomania of its stars. Today especially, now that most movies are dull-witted, condescending and characterised by lowest common denominators, we ask ourselves whether the stars are to blame. Do the massive sums charged by Cruise, Pitt, Roberts et al ensure that producers take no risks whatsoever, ever copying past successes? And do their egos, the constant imperative that they ALWAYS LOOK GOOD, ensure that they, rather than the film or the story, are at the centre of the film-making process?
One actor you could never accuse of this is Willem Dafoe. Having spent much of his working life in experimental theatre in New York, you could hardly call him a money-grabber. Indeed, whenever he has a hit - and he has often been hot in Hollywood - he always chooses to return to the stage, or to some challenging indie production on the other side of the planet. So, no bread head he. Then there's the ego. His own wife has called him "psychotic for attention", but Dafoe does not embrace the cult of personality. Much to the annoyance of interviewers, he refuses to talk about himself other than as an actor, explaining time and time again that to do so would make it more difficult for people to accept him in character and thus spoil his films for them. He's said he wants to be "a blank slate", and to most of us, he is.
He was born William Dafoe on the 22nd of July, 1955, in Appleton, a town dominated by its paper mill, in Wisconsin. Appleton's by Lake Winnebago, up the Fox river from Green Bay. His father, William, was a surgeon, while his Bostonian mother was a nurse, both working at the same medical facility. There were five sisters and two brothers, young William being second youngest. Aside from his mum, who retained her East Coast accent, the rest, he says, had a touch of the Fargos about them. Attending Einstein Jr High School in Appleton, he soon picked up the nickname Willem - it stuck.
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