Quote

You can be intuitive when you've got a more expansive role. You can get into the poetry of telling the story rather than just pushing buttons.

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
Role
Poetry
Roles
Story
Expansive
Rather
Buttons
Stories
Intuitive
Pushing
Telling

More quotes by Willem Dafoe

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Celebrity is okay as long as you know it's not about you.
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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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
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In my experience, sometimes a movie just hits at the wrong time, gets the wrong press, or gets the wrong representation, and it gets misunderstood.
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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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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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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It makes me laugh when I hear a guy talking about being in touch with his feminine side. But I gravitate towards women, I identify with them. And I do cry very easily, more and more as I get older.
Willem Dafoe
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When I was a kid I was very interested in the idea of the will, finding out what you're capable of. I liked those kind of challenges.
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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Weirdness is not my game. I'm just a square boy from Wisconsin.
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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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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Turn off the sound in a movie, and if you can tell what's going on, the movie should work.
Willem Dafoe
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In films you do a scene, you play around with it and unless you're doing a lot of reshooting, which no one has the luxury to do, you deal with the problem for a day and then you move on. On some level, it never allows you to go very deep into what performing is about.
Willem Dafoe
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I'll never be able to really see a film that I'm in.
Willem Dafoe
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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
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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
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The truth is I like the crazy ones better than the well-behaved ones normally because they tend to be the passionate ones. They never come after you if you're holding up your end. The only thing that's bad about an abusive director is that they bully the people they can.
Willem Dafoe
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For every role, you have to always find a different way to approach it, one that's specific and suits what the key is. Every role's a mystery. I think if you know what it is, you probably shouldn't even do it.
Willem Dafoe