By Benjamin Svetkey
Translator: Issac
Proofreader: Zhu Puyi
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
William Dafoe's routine was this: he usually got up early at five or six o'clock. He meditated for a while, then had a cup of coffee and wrote another diary. Afterwards he would check his mailbox, do yoga, and prepare breakfast. He was almost always preparing to make a movie, and at this time, he would practice his lines for a few hours. Other times when he wasn't making movies, he went to school, took a walk in his West Village neighborhood, or did his favorite thing — washing clothes.
"That's one of the things that makes me the happiest," he said. "I love to wash clothes, and when I stayed in the hotel, I had to resist the urge to wash a lot of clothes by hand. Sometimes, when I go to a strange city, I will go to the launderette myself. When I was in France lately, I used to do this a lot – I was making movies in France at the time – and it was a wonderful experience. For some reason, the people at the laundromat were nice to me and the people I met were kind. We'll talk about interesting, wonderful things..."
William Dafoe
Of course, what sets Dafoe apart from his love of washing clothes – is that he doesn't really have a "daily" life. Every day he lived was extraordinary.
Today, for example, the 62-year-old Oscar nominee — who was nominated for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role in "Florida Paradise," a two-million-dollar film that tells the story of children from low-income families living in a cheap motel near Disneyland® in Orlando — lounging on the shaded balcony of a hotel overlooking santa Barbara, just before the awards season ends when he's about to embark on another cruise in the city.
Florida Paradise (2017)
He was dressed casually but fashionably — black jeans, a white T-shirt, and an unsettled gray beard (a trace of his recent appearance in Vincent van Gogh in Julian Schnabel's "At the Gate to Eternity") — but a few hours later, he had to dress up, put on a formal suit, take to the stage, and accept the Pioneer Award at the Santa Barbara Film Festival, which was officially considered to be "a unique contribution to cinema".
In Dafoe, to say "unique" is an understatement. From Jesus (Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ) to tropical fish (Finding Nemo), he created countless images. In Oliver Stone's 1986 Field Platoon, he worked with Charlie Sheen, spending time in the trenches together (the film earned him his first Oscar nomination).
Field Platoon (1986)
In 2000's The Phantom of the Vampire, he made up for the head-popping special effects to play silent film star Marcos Sharick, wearing six-inch fingernail props (the film made him nominated for an Oscar twice), and later in 2002's Spider-Man, he played the role of the Green Devil, stepping on a flying machine and flying around New York (he later starred in two sequels to the film).
Spider-Man (2002)
And these are just the tip of the iceberg of his career — he also starred in 1993's Naked Horror (with Madonna dripping wax on him) and Lars von Trier's 2009 "The Antichrist" (in which Charlotte Gansbough broke his vital organs), but his performances were not well received, and he also played a large number of important roles, small roles and sometimes completely overlooked roles.
Over the past 37 years, Dafoe has starred in more than 100 films, and he makes two or three films a year, sometimes four or more (last year, he made six, the highest-yielding year, and added voiceovers to two documentaries).
Naked Horror (1993)
But There is one more thing that sets William Dafoe apart. Although he has a high production and has almost never been absent from the screen in the past four decades, he has never been considered an eye-catching movie superstar. He received numerous nominations and was favored by film critics. However, there was not much gossip around him. Paparazzi photographers don't run to his door and wait (they probably don't even know where his home is).
Fans also asked him to quietly wash his clothes at the launderette. Dafoe insists on his current identity, does not want to be a more famous movie star, and prefers that no one knows about his behind-the-scenes life. That would make it easier for him to "disappear into the character," he said.
Still, when you want to take the little golden man home, the "disappear" strategy is not at all conducive to winning. So he sat idly in a chair on the hotel balcony, scratching his gray beard, and in a few hours anyway, someone would come and rummage through his laundry bag.
People who don't know him very well may not know that his real name is not Willem, but Chinese William. In his youth, in Appleton, Wisconsin, his name was Bill, sometimes billed Billy, and his brother jokingly nicknamed him "Bleeblob" when he was very young (as for the reason, Dafoe's family never revealed, but they implied that the reason was very embarrassing).
Dafoe was the seventh of his parents' eight children, and the family lived in an overcrowded colony with little adult supervision. Dafoe's father was a doctor and his mother was a nurse, and because his parents were rarely at home, Dafoe was almost single-handedly raised by his five older sisters.
"My parents first joined the Republican Party at Eisenhower," he said, "but after I was born, they both dropped things over there." Fortunately, he still thrived in the midst of chaos. Once, at the age of eight, he locked himself in a cupboard for two days.
He wasn't hiding anything or feeling depressed. He just wanted to know what it was like to be confined to a small space for a long time, like the astronauts in the news reports sitting on the gemini program's rockets. "No one in the family noticed I was gone," he said.
"He's always been an actor," said Dafoe's brother Don, a 67-year-old transplant surgeon at Laguna Beach who drove to the festival.
"He always does crazy things to cause trouble. I remember one time when he was 10 or 12 years old, he was wearing a gorilla costume and climbing up a building in downtown Appleton, like King Kong." Another brother, Richard, added that Richard, a 65-year-old commercial litigator in Dallas, also came to the Santa Barbara Film Festival, "and he was always doing creative things." If his assignment was to write a thesis, he wouldn't write it by hand, but perform it in class."
Sometimes, Dafoe also gets into trouble because of his creative spirit. Once, for example, he borrowed a high school camera, made a documentary, and was fired because he said he was shooting "pornography" ("There's a bare ass in the video," Dafoe said. But he didn't want to stay in Appleton, so he came to Milwaukee, spent the night on a couch at a friend's house, started taking drama classes in college, and finally joined a small theater troupe, where Dafoe began to study acting.
"But I never thought acting could be a profession," Dafoe said. "I don't know anyone in the entertainment industry. I just love acting, I'm happy acting, acting is like my social. I thought, I might end up in the merchant fleet, or join the army."
The Antichrist (2009)
When he arrived in New York in the mid-1970s, his attitude towards acting became more serious. It was also at this time that he gave himself a Dutch name, removed the "ia" and added the "e" (although the name on his driver's license and passport was still "William"). "It's not that I'm going to have a stage name," he said, "it's that I don't want to be William or Bill or Billy anymore." In terms of results, it was a clever move; the nice new name allowed him to better deal with people in the city.
Soon after, he joined the Worcester Theatre Company, the youngest actor in the troupe, a theatre company based in the old metal stamp factory in London's Soho district, which often arranged strange, experimental works, such as a version of "Our Town", but the actors were dressed in blackface and adult videos were on the stage.
Critics aren't always so friendly, and Dafoe's own financial problems are always problematic (Dafoe makes extra money by doing mannequins in art classes), but it's here that Dafoe meets his mentor and his muse— his partner for a long time.
Theater director Elisabeth Lacante was 33 at the time and Dafoe was 22, and their relationship lasted for nearly 30 years (their child, Jack Dafoe, now 34, is a public policy researcher) until the two broke up in 2004, when Dafoe met the then 42-year-old Italian director Giada Corra Grande while filming The Life Aquatic in Rome. "I wasn't looking for anything, I just fell in love," he said naturally. "Then my life changed."
After Dafoe and Lycont broke up, he was expelled from the Worcester Troupe, where Lycont was still directing. But the little theater has been The Center of Gravity for many years, even after Hollywood beckoned him.
Strictly speaking, his first film was 1980's No Love, a low-budget motorcycle-themed film co-directed by Montigeri and the young director Catherine Bigelow, who directed for the first time.
No Love (1980)
But the film's release was delayed for two years, so Dafoe first appeared on the theater screen as a minor role in the better-known Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate." In order to make this unprofitable work, Dafoe stayed on the set for three months and was a "good extra", but was later fired.
Heaven's Gate (1980)
"We were dressed and makeup, we were standing on set, they were adjusting the lighting, and the woman next to me was quietly telling me a joke," Dafoe said. "I laughed too loudly. Cimino walked around, looked at me, and said, "William, stand up!" Then he asked me to go back to the hotel. An hour later, I received a plane ticket and he asked me to go home." Dafoe couldn't remember what the joke was, "It was a meat joke."
Dafoe doesn't have a male protagonist's face at all—"If your house is next to the mausoleum, I'm like the boy next door," he once laughed at himself—but even in his twenties and thirties, his skeleton and wild temperament were perfect for playing villains, such as the counterfeiter in William Friedkin's "Mighty Men."
Mighty Men (1985)
He even fought for the role of the Joker in 1989's Batman. "(The screenwriter) Sam Hamm said I was physically the best person to play the Clown," Dafoe recalled, "but they still didn't let me play."
It was a kinder character who got Hollywood to notice him. "Initially, we were looking for an American Native," said Oliver Stone, referring to the role of Field Platoon Sergeant Gordon Elias, who later died in a rain of bullets in a rice paddy. "But we can't find Native Americans. So we switched the role to white, and we were going to find an actor who looked different."
Stone later, Born on the Fourth of July, joined Dufoe to play with the well-known handsome actor Tom Cruise, who believed that Dafoe had an evergreen career precisely because of his extraordinary characteristics (the New York Times once used "the Creator of Cubist artists" to describe Dafoe's appearance).
Born on the 4th of July (1989)
"He's not a movie star," Stone said. "He's not the kind of handsomeness people often say he is. But that's why he's still working hard. He didn't fall into the trap that movie stars often fall into. He still maintains his identity as an actor."
After Dafoe was nominated for an Oscar for "Field Platoon," the opportunities kept flowing — judging by his performances, he was still himself. Dafoe gives a lot of reasons why he takes on some of the scenes — "Sometimes the reasons can be simple, like , 'Wow, I want to ride a motorcycle, I want to wear those clothes'" — but in reality, it's hard to figure out the logic behind his choices.
An actor like him can shoot the sunny spring and snow like "Suffering" in 1997 for a month, and then he can devote himself to films such as "Life and Death Speed 2: Thrills at Sea". "Ah, I'm going to reject some of the films too," he insisted, "but I can't say which ones I rejected, because it's not good for them."
Life and Death Speed 2: Thrills at Sea (1997)
Dafoe grew older, but he never slowed down. Last year, he starred in Kenneth Branagh's remake of Murder on the Orient Express; the dystopian thriller "The Hunt for Monday"; he almost made a face in "Justice League" (his underwater shot of Nudis Vico was eventually cut, but he would still be in this year's "Aquaman"), he also studied painting to play Van Gogh (Julian Schnabel was his personal mentor); and of course, he starred in the Oscar-nominated "Florida Paradise", playing a father-like motel manager , taking care of tenants whose lives are deteriorating.
The film allowed him to hone his acting skills with many six-year-olds and newcomers to acting for the first time. "When I came to William for the role, everyone thought, 'No! He's a villain, he's a bad guy!" Director Sean Baker said his best-known work was "Orange" on the iPhone in 2015.
"But William played the role with his own flavor. He came to Florida a week early, chose his own outfit – the idea of wearing sunglasses was his own – and he met with the hotel managers around him in person for inspiration. He was so good to the children. Friendly to everyone and approachable. Never play a big card."
For Dafoe, working with children is a bit of an experimental theater. "Since the film is from a child's point of view, you have to be welcoming to the chaos," he said. "The biggest challenge is to remain calm and patient. I'm always ready to deal with situations that get out of hand, but I have to let the kids drive [the movie]."
During the filming of "Florida Paradise," Dafoe never complained or lost his temper — on the contrary, his performance was quiet and calm, and there was actually no trace of the performance. That led to his unexpected Oscar nominations, and the Academy usually nominated for more prominent roles. Dafoe also seemed a little surprised. Probably because it's been a while since he last ran for the awards season, he feels a little rusty about "business".
"A lot of things have changed since I was nominated for an Oscar for the first time," he said of this year's award-winning campaign. "Things have evolved a lot, they've gotten more complicated, and people's opportunities to perform are much more. When I was first nominated for Field Platoon, I didn't even have any publicists. I don't even know when they will release the nominations. Or my son's nanny called and told me I was nominated for an Oscar."
Still, one change he's particularly supportive of is the #MeToo movement. "I've worked with a lot of female directors," he notes. "My wife is also a female director. I understand the inequalities. I know they have a lot of difficulties. It also had an impact on me because I could see how things changed. Sometimes, when I read a script, I find problems. For example, I read and read, and then all the women start undressing and I say, 'What's going on here?' What more can I say? I'm 'getting an education.'"
"I live a herdsman-like life," Dafoe said, nodding toward the greenery that surrounds the hotel's balcony. "Last year I spent five months in Australia, two months in England and three months in France..."
Dafoe and his wife have homes in Both New York and Rome, but he rarely spends more than a month or two in both places. For most of the year, he was on the road, rushing from one set to another. Sometimes his wife would run around with him ("She's my home," Dafoe said).
But this constant rush gives him a unique sense of continuity. Although everyone except him measured their lives in terms of moments—birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, deaths—he used movies. "I remember my life through my films." Dafoe said.
Later in the day, hundreds of people appeared at Santa Barbara's Arlington Theater — including Two of Dafoe's brothers, both barely dressed up but both with similar eyes — and the two rushed to witness The Moment When Dafoe won the Pioneer Award.
Before Dafoe took the stage, he also saw clips of his life's work playing on the stage. This five-minute video captures the greatest moment of his life. At least in some people's opinion, it is the greatest moment. "They cut almost all of the footage of the films I made at the company," Dafoe later pointed out, a little disappointed. "They missed a lot of other videos."
Of course, if the video had been edited more completely, it would have been longer than Las von Trier's films. Not to mention that Dafoe is still making films. He is said to have promised to star in a film based on Jonathan Lesham's crime novel The Orphan of Brooklyn, which takes place in the 1950s and features a detective with Tourette syndrome.
Edward Norton had been working for the film for many years (he would both direct the film and play the main character, while Dafoe played his brother). "I've always had things to do," Dafoe said lightly, explaining his talent. "I didn't always know what was right for me, but I knew what would ignite my passion and make me happy."
In this way, in Dafoe's recent daily life of loving to wash clothes, nothing will make him unhappy. "Tell you the truth," he confessed, "I don't like to fold clothes."