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Any actor who tells you that he makes choices, absolutely, is wrong. You find work and work finds you.
Willem Dafoe
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Willem Dafoe
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: July 22
Film Actor
Film Producer
Model
Performing Artist
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Voice Actor
Appleton
Wisconsin
William J. Willem Dafoe
William James Dafoe
Find
Finds
Work
Tells
Absolutely
Actor
Choices
Wrong
Actors
Makes
More quotes by Willem Dafoe
I'm an optimist. I hope if a movie's good that it will be a success, but as we know, that's not always true, just because of popular taste, advertising, distribution patterns - there's lots of reasons.
Willem Dafoe
I was doing community theater, and I was always interested in acting, but I was also interested in sports. I was interested in a lot of things. I was a pretty normal guy. I wasn't like a guy who grew up in a dark theater watching movies.
Willem Dafoe
I'm never in Hollywood! I'm a theatre actor that lives in New York. I'm very seldom in Los Angeles. I don't dislike LA, I just don't think it's a very healthy place for me to be all the time. When I'm shooting a movie there and am working I'm perfectly happy. But when I'm not working or engaged in something it's a place that I wouldn't live.
Willem Dafoe
It's no fun for an actor to keep repeating what you did before. It's always changing. I'm changing. The target keeps moving. That's the beauty of it.
Willem Dafoe
I love theaters. I love the event of going there and seeing a movie with a lot of people. I like the community coming around the story.
Willem Dafoe
Let's hope I never end up on a deserted island, because I could never make a decision on which three CDs to take with me.
Willem Dafoe
All the time, as an actor, you want to be asking what's next and where things are going. If you're not asking those questions, you're not growing.
Willem Dafoe
I prefer shooting on location, just because it always helps you. You go some place, you put your life on hold even more than when you've settled in some place. You can make a new life so it opens yourself up to the make-believe and the imagination in a way when you aren't burdened by things that remind you of your life all the time.
Willem Dafoe
I try to do as many of my own stunts as possible. If you keep on taking yourself out of the role you play, you lose the thread of the character.
Willem Dafoe
I aspire to be an instrument of the director. I'm happiest like that. The stronger the director, the more I'm willing to give them.
Willem Dafoe
When I give over to somebody's vision rather than have an idea of what I need to do, it takes me to places I wouldn't have got to by myself. I'm always attracted to a strong director.
Willem Dafoe
I think on some level, you do your best things when you're a little off-balance, a little scared. You've got to work from mystery, from wonder, from not knowing.
Willem Dafoe
Performing is about developing empathy, which leads us to a broader view of the world and encourages us to develop compassion so we can comfort each other and not be so brutal with each other.
Willem Dafoe
The truth is, if you're around long enough, you have a story about everyone. But it's best to keep your mouth shut sometimes.
Willem Dafoe
Sometimes you make very interesting movies that aren't meant for everybody. But this is a capitalist society, so everything conspires to put value on whether it sells or not.
Willem Dafoe
Sometimes you feel like you have to do research to make something, other times you know you don't feel it so much.
Willem Dafoe
Film is fragmented and gets into lots of other people's hands. There are a lot of pleasures that theatre gives me. You get to perform uninterrupted.
Willem Dafoe
It's true in the beginning I started playing villains, and I think that's pretty clear, because if you don't conventionally look a certain way and you've got a certain kind of presence when you're young, then what's available to you is character roles, and the best character roles when you're young tend to be villains.
Willem Dafoe
I have some sort of affinity for compulsive behavior. The most interesting stories come up from the people on the outside. They don't waste energy marching to the same drummer most of us do. It gives us an opportunity to look at things in a different way, which is the purest thing cinema can do.
Willem Dafoe
My dad was a surgeon, my mom a nurse, and they were always out working. I had five sisters and a brother. They didn't care what I got up to.
Willem Dafoe