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I was born William. My father was William. I came from a big family, I hated being called Billy. Willem's a nickname it's a Dutch name, very common in the Netherlands.

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
Came
Nickname
Names
Nicknames
Common
Billy
Family
Dutch
Bigs
William
Born
Hated
Father
Name
Willem
Called
Netherlands

More quotes by Willem Dafoe

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It's fair to say that if you have a lot of experience, your power is greater. You have more of an opportunity to roll up your sleeves with younger directors.
Willem Dafoe
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I am confident only when I am constantly in motion. Between projects, the doubt creeps in.
Willem Dafoe
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I'm no different to anyone else I want people to like me. I just don't particularly want them to understand me.
Willem Dafoe
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One of the pleasures of being an actor is quite simply taking a walk in someone else's shoes. And when I look at the roles I've played, I'm kind of amazed at all the wonderful adventures I've had and the different things I've learned.
Willem Dafoe
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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
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The real difficulty for smaller films, when they're made independently and it's time to go for a distributor, sometimes if it's a tough film and the people who financed it need their money back right away, it's much easier and lucrative to take a DVD deal.
Willem Dafoe
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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
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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
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Plenty of bad movies are very successful, and plenty of good movies are not. And distribution is so crazy, some films won't even get their day in court.
Willem Dafoe
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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
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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
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There's a real wisdom to not saying a thing.
Willem Dafoe
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That's a frustration sometimes, that certain directors that I'd like to work with, they just aren't doing stories that I'm sort of castable in. Not always, but sometimes I have that frustration.
Willem Dafoe
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I was watching 'Wild at Heart,' and I can honestly say I did nothing for that apart from show up!
Willem Dafoe
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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
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The worst thing is to get involved with people who aren't passionate about what they're doing.
Willem Dafoe
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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
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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
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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
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With theatre, you have to be ready for anything.
Willem Dafoe