Quote

Great theatre is about challenging how we think and encouraging us to fantasize about a world we aspire to.

Willem Dafoe

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Great
Think
Thinking
Fantasize
World
Encouraging
Aspire
Challenging
Theatre
Challenges

More quotes by Willem Dafoe

Image
As you get older, you suffer fools less easily. That's why there's all those cranky character actors. I'm an exception. I'm a sweetheart.
Willem Dafoe
Image
Film is an editor's medium. You can create very good raw material and they can make it horrible, or you can do not so well and they can make it beautiful. You don't really know.
Willem Dafoe
Image
I feel like it's important to be flexible, particularly when I'm coming in late in the game and I'm connective tissue in the story. I'm not at the very center. It's important for me to have a certain kind of flexibility and try to help people do what they need to do.
Willem Dafoe
Image
Any actor who tells you that he makes choices, absolutely, is wrong. You find work and work finds you.
Willem Dafoe
Image
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
Image
Weirdness is not my game. I'm just a square boy from Wisconsin.
Willem Dafoe
Image
I don't have a preference between theatre and film I like to do both. But I will say that there's something about theatre that is more nourishing and sustaining than film ever can be.
Willem Dafoe
Image
The worst thing is to get involved with people who aren't passionate about what they're doing.
Willem Dafoe
Image
I don't worry so much about the audience. I want them very much to be involved and enjoy the movie, but I try to just inhabit the character in a full way, where I can create a personal stake.
Willem Dafoe
Image
Trust is always a factor. You've just got to look at the big picture, and you've got to look at the small picture - the small picture in the sense that you've got to make every scene work and you've got to deal with what people are presenting you with, too.
Willem Dafoe
Image
I've been in very few flat-out comedies. But I feel like I've always made comedies.
Willem Dafoe
Image
Action breeds inspiration more than inspiration breeds action.
Willem Dafoe
Image
When you work on anything, you want to find the range of impulses - which ones get portrayed is another question, but you want to have that complexity and that fullness, even if you're playing a cartoon character.
Willem Dafoe
Image
I set myself challenges every time I work. Ideally I approach everything as though it's the first time - with a beginner's mind and an amateur's love.
Willem Dafoe
Image
I guess they often cast me as the bad guy, because I'm not, er, conventional looking. I look sort of violent. I'm the odd one out, the outsider.
Willem Dafoe
Image
Mounting those red stairs [in Cannes] is something I've done with a very different intention many times. So it's interesting any time you witness those shifts of perspective. The beach scenes were also fun. It felt very strange and very theatrical to kind of commandeer it and have La Mer booming over the speakers.
Willem Dafoe
Image
I pride myself on being fairly polite on a set so it's kind of a guilty pleasure to poke others on the set.
Willem Dafoe
Image
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
Image
I'll never be able to really see a film that I'm in.
Willem Dafoe
Image
I want to work with people who are good at what they do, and people who are passionate.
Willem Dafoe