Willem Dafoe: The Essential Films & Performances

The great Willem Dafoe was born in Appleton, Wisconsin, in 1955. Since his first uncredited appearance in Michael Cimino’s “Heaven’s Gate” – in which Dafoe, enjoying his first real Hollywood gig before going on to star in Kathryn Bigelow’s arty biker tone poem “The Loveless,” would go on to be fired for lying about speaking Dutch – the Oscar-nominated actor has featured in over a hundred films, all of which are automatically more interesting because he is in them.

Dafoe’s career runs the gamut from the arthouse to the larger DC superhero universe; over the course of his remarkable, far-ranging filmography, the actor has undeniably mastered playing all manners of creeps, psychos, and misunderstood souls. Dafoe dials up the menace better than just about anyone, and yet, somehow, he can capture a character’s imperfect, human side like few others could hope to. Even when Dafoe is in lackluster movies, he finds a way to rise above the material. He’s an actor you can trust to bring a certain playful, sinister flair to even the most thankless of roles, which might be why certain directors (Abel Ferrara, Wes Anderson, Lars Von Trier, Paul Schrader) seem intent on working with him in project after project.

Recently, Dafoe gave one of his most intimate performances to date as the tormented artiste at the center of Abel Ferrara’s Rome-set “Tommaso.” Ferrara is one of many filmmakers who seems to regard Dafoe as a kindred creative spirit: he’s worked with the actor six times, the most recent collaborations being the unconventional biopic “Pasolini” and the new release “Siberia,” which looks like it could be Ferrara’s most confounding film to date.

What we’re trying to say is that Willem Dafoe is one of the most versatile performers of the 20^th century, and that, against all odds, the work that he has done and will continue to do in the 2000s, the 2010s, and beyond will never be anything less than indispensable. Before you catch “Siberia” in theaters or at home, here are our favorite performances that Willem Dafoe has given over his now twenty-year career.

“The Loveless” (1981)
Before she was the action auteur responsible for propulsive spectacles like the surf-rat classic “Point Break,” Kathryn Bigelow served as a co-director on the hyper-stylized outlaw biker flick “The Loveless,” in which Dafoe provides what is by far the movie’s most memorable performance. While “The Loveless,” kind of nihilist riff on “The Wild One,” is the definition of an acquired taste, it’s also noteworthy for introducing the world to the sneering, supremely cool side of Dafoe’s onscreen persona. Here, Dafoe plays Vance, the leering, oversexed leader of a terrifying clan of bikers wreaking havoc in a small, all-American town. Over the years, “The Loveless” has graduated from curio to beloved cult item. Still, if nothing else, it serves as a reminder of how ferociously watchable Willem Dafoe was even in the earliest stages of his career.

“Streets Of Fire” (1984)
“Streets Of Fire” was met with somewhat mixed notices upon release. Still, the turbo-charged jukebox-musical love story seems radically ahead of its time viewed today: it’s a hyper-kinetic genre mish-mosh that marries the anarchic twelve-bar fury of “The Blues Brothers,” the muscular bubblegum set pieces of something like “Baby Driver,” and the rough-and-tumble mystique of “The Outsiders,” resulting in one of director Walter Hill’s more purely arresting works. Dafoe mostly exists on the margins of “Streets of Fire”: here, after “The Loveless,” Dafoe once again plays a malicious biker tough, this time in a much more outlandish, borderline-theatrical register (for context: the character’s name is Raven Shaddock). A lesser actor might disappear into the movie’s neon pageantry, but Dafoe, snarling and wreaking havoc all the while, absolutely owns every minute of his screentime here.

“To Live And Die In L.A.” (1985)
We’re fairly sure that many movie-lovers would pick “The French Connection,” “The Exorcist,” or even “Sorcerer” as their desert island William Friedkin movie. One could also make a strong case for the director’s deliciously hyper-sleazy L.A. crime saga, “To Live And Die In L.A..” While William Petersen is working in the same smoldering-scumbag mode, he would perfect a year later in Michael Mann’s “Manhunter,” but it’s Dafoe who emerges as easily the movie’s most interesting character. Dafoe plays Rick Masters: pitiless, calculating, ice-cold counterfeiter extraordinaire. This is one of Dafoe’s more restrained performances: seething and tightly coiled, much like the movie it occupies. Friedkin and cinematographer Robby Müller get a lot of mileage out of the eerie blankness of Dafoe’s face, which is just as well since his character isn’t one for talking. Dafoe is hypnotically in sync with his director here, offering proof that great movie villains are often more interesting to watch than movie heroes.

“Platoon” (1986)
“Platoon,” Oliver Stone’s scathing indictment of the Vietnam War, remains the controversial auteur’s most well-acted picture to date. It’s no simple distinction, being the standout in an ensemble that includes Charlie Sheen, Keith David, Forest Whitaker, and Tom Berenger, all operating at the peak of their respective powers. But if there’s anyone who walks away with “Platoon” and makes it look easy, it’s Dafoe. Dafoe’s character here, Sgt. Elias Groden is a paradoxical figure: a rough-hewn man who has numbed himself to combat, and yet, a man who is soulful, even occasionally introspective. Groden dabbles in drugs and occasionally seems uncertain about whether or not the cause he’s fighting for is a just one. While “Platoon” sees Stone reconfiguring existing war-movie conventions, Dafoe makes Groden feel like the most multifaceted member in this outfit: an accomplishment that makes his character’s fate all the more tragic.

“The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988)
Playing Jesus in a movie is obviously no walk in the park: ask Jim Caviezel, whose handsome frame was pummeled into mincemeat in The Passion of the Christ.” As the martyred Son of God in Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ,” Dafoe opts for a decidedly more sensitive approach. One of the movie’s smartest decisions is to humanize Christ, who, for millennia, has been painted as a one-dimensionally altruistic savior. Dafoe lets us see the guilt and desire in Christ, all of which is very of a piece with Scorsese’s oeuvre, focused as it has been on men who ping-pong between destruction and divinity. Dafoe has one of those ageless faces that acquits itself exquisitely to a Biblical milieu, and he and Scorsese are very much on the same page in terms of bringing an inquisitive sensibility to material that, in anyone else’s hands, might have come across as too pious.