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Willem Dafoe

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Willem Dafoe
Willem Dafoe
BornWilliam Dafoe
Height5ft 10in (178cm)

Willem Dafoe (born July 22, 1955) is an Academy Award-nominated American film and stage actor and a founding member of the experimental theatre company The Wooster Group. He is best known for his roles in the Hollywood films The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Platoon (1986) and the Spider-Man series.

Biography

Early life

Dafoe, the seventh of eight children, was born William Dafoe in Appleton, Wisconsin, to Muriel Isabel (Sprissler), a nurse and Boston native, and Dr. William Alfred Dafoe, a surgeon. His paternal grandfather was from Ontario, Canada. He acquired the nickname "Willeam" in childhood. His birth name is William Dafoe; he changed it to "Willem" (Dutch for "William") so people wouldn't call him "Billy". After graduating from Appleton East High School, he studied drama at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, but left before graduation in order to join the newly formed avant-garde group Theatre X.

Career

After touring with Theatre X for four years in the United States and Europe, he moved to New York City and joined the Performance Group. Dafoe's film career began in 1981, when he was cast in Heaven's Gate, but his role was removed from the film during editing. A year later he starred as the leader of a motorcycle gang in The Loveless (and later played a similar role in Streets of Fire), but his first breakthrough film role was as the compassionate Sergeant Elias in Platoon (1986). He has since become a popular character actor; due to his harsh facial features, he is often typecast as unstable or villainous characters, such as the psychotic Green Goblin in the Spider-Man movies and Barillo in Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Before that, he was briefly considered for the role of The Joker by Tim Burton and Sam Hamm for the Batman film in 1989. Hamm recalls "We thought, 'Well, Willem Dafoe looks just like The Joker.'" The role ended up going to Jack Nicholson. He also played Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). He once remarked "To this day, I can't believe I was so brazen to think I could pull off the Jesus role," though Dafoe received acclaim despite the controversy surrounding the film.

He starred in the erotic drama Body of Evidence with Madonna. In this film, he appeared totally nude, as well as giving Madonna cunnilingus in a famous scene in a carpark. Dafoe played peculiar detectives in The Boondock Saints (1999) and in American Psycho (2000). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1986 for Platoon and 2000 for Shadow of the Vampire. After Spider-Man, Dafoe had a rare opportunity to play a heroic film role when he provided the voice of Gill in the animated movie Finding Nemo.

He worked briefly as a model in a 1990 Prada campaign. In 2004, Dafoe lent his likeness and voice for the highly successful James Bond video game Everything or Nothing as villain Nikolai Diavolo. In 2006, he played NYPD detective Stan Aubray on the hunt for a serial killer, the lead in New York-set thriller Anamorph, opposite Scott Speedman and Peter Stormare. In his most recent film he stars alongside Rowan Atkinson in the sequel to 1997's Bean, Mr. Bean's Holiday which was released worldwide 30th March 2007.

Personal life

Dafoe met director Elizabeth LeCompte at the Performance Group. LeCompte and Dafoe were part of the restructuring of The Performance Group and became professional collaborators and founding members of The Wooster Group, and began a relationship. Their son, Jack, was born in 1982. Dafoe married Italian director and actress Giada Colagrande on March 25, 2005.

Filmography

References

  1. http://www.tiscali.co.uk/entertainment/film/biographies/willem_dafoe_biog.html
  2. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~battle/celeb/dafoe.htm
  3. http://www.batmanmovieonline.com/behindthescenes/articles/samhamm.htm

External links

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