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I don't want people to know anything about me, because that's not important. I'm more interested in the me that takes shape through the characters.

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
People
Shape
Shapes
Characters
Interested
Takes
Character
Anything
Important

More quotes by Willem Dafoe

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Sometimes I think women are lucky because they can develop in ways men can't. The old-boy network may be oppressive to women, but it actually stunts men in terms of personal growth.
Willem Dafoe
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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
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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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If you get stuck and it feels a little stiff, then you do have to mess it up to find it. But other times it's really written and you just stick to your guns and do it as elegantly and as concentrated and as committed as you can.
Willem Dafoe
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I love Sam Neill. The thing that I always say about him, and I think it's true, is he's so dry. When he's serious, I think he's joking when he's joking, I think he's serious.
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'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
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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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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
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I love doing action and stuff the problem is usually action movies are not that interesting. Also as I get older I feel like there's less opportunities for me.
Willem Dafoe
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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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You have to lose yourself to find yourself.
Willem Dafoe
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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
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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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When you have something to work with, then you fly with it.
Willem Dafoe
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I'm a task-oriented actor. A pretender. And I try to invent my process anew each time I make a new project. So I frown on any method.
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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I want to work with people who are good at what they do, and people who are passionate.
Willem Dafoe
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There's a real wisdom to not saying a thing.
Willem Dafoe
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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