Dafoe, Willem

Dafoe, Willem

▪ American actor
original name  William J. Dafoe 
born July 22, 1955, Appleton, Wis., U.S.

      American actor known for his versatility and willingness to appear in controversial roles.

      Dafoe, the son of a surgeon and a nurse, was one of seven children. He studied theatre at the University of Wisconsin but left school to join Theater X, an experimental Wisconsin-based theatre troupe with which Dafoe toured for four years. In 1977 he moved to New York City and joined The Performance Group. There he met the actress and director Elizabeth LeCompte, who founded the deconstructionist theatre company the Wooster Group, with which Dafoe later performed.

      Dafoe made his film debut in Heaven's Gate (1980) and appeared in numerous other movies in the early 1980s. He gained prominence for his role in To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), in which he played a counterfeiter attempting to elude capture by the police. Perhaps his best-known role was as Sergeant Elias Grodin in Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986), which earned Dafoe his first Academy Award nomination. Dafoe was critically lauded for his performances in a number of controversial films released in the late 1980s. He played Christ in Martin Scorsese (Scorsese, Martin)'s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)—a film based on Níkos Kazantzákis (Kazantzákis, Níkos)'s revisionist novel of Christ's life and relationship with Mary Magdalene—and starred as an FBI agent investigating the disappearance of civil rights activists in the 1960s in Mississippi Burning (1988).

      Throughout the 1990s Dafoe continued to appear in roles that allowed him to explore moral ambiguity in characters. He played a tormented T.S. Eliot (Eliot, T.S.) coping with his wife's emotional disintegration in Tom and Viv (1994) and appeared in The English Patient (1996), an adaptation of the novel by Michael Ondaatje (Ondaatje, Michael). In the cult film The Boondock Saints (1999), he portrayed a detective tracking down two renegade killers who believe their actions to be righteous. Dafoe received his second Academy Award nomination for his role as Max Schreck in Shadow of the Vampire (2000), a fictionalized account of the making of the classic vampire film Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922; “Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror”). Dafoe also flourished as an actor in such mainstream films as Spider-Man (2002) and its two sequels (2004, 2007), in which he played the comic villain the Green Goblin; the animated Finding Nemo (2003), for which he provided the voice of a fish; and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), a comedy about an idiosyncratic marine-documentary crew.

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Universalium. 2010.

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Look at other dictionaries:

  • Willem Dafoe — Nombre real William Dafoe Nacimiento 22 de julio de 1955 (56 años) …   Wikipedia Español

  • Willem Dafoe — Infobox actor caption = Table of Free Voices, Berlin, September 9, 2006 birthname = William J. Dafoe birthdate = birth date and age|1955|07|22 birthplace = Appleton, Wisconsin spouse = Giada Colagrande (2005 present) awards = Saturn Award for… …   Wikipedia

  • Willem Dafoe — Pour les articles homonymes, voir Dafoe. Willem Dafoe …   Wikipédia en Français

  • Willem Dafoe — beim Internationalen Film Festival in Toronto 2009 …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Dafoe — is a family name, see Allan Roy Dafoe (1883–1943), Canadian obstetrician Byron Dafoe (born 1971), Canadian hockey player Colin Scott Dafoe (1909 1969), Canadian surgeon Frances Dafoe (born 1929), Canadian figure skater John Wesley Dafoe… …   Wikipedia

  • Dafoe — ist der Familienname folgender Personen: Allan Roy Dafoe (1883–1943), kanadischer Gynäkologe Byron Dafoe (* 1971), kanadischer Eishockeyspieler Frances Dafoe (* 1929), kanadischer Eisläufer John Wesley Dafoe (1866–1944), kanadischer Journalist… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Willem — is a Dutch given name. The name stems from the Germanic languages, and can be seen as the Dutch equivalent of the name William in English.People*Willem I, Willem II and Willem III, Kings of the Netherlands. *Crown Prince Willem of the Netherlands …   Wikipedia

  • Willem — ist eine niederländisch/flämische (nach der Aussprache teils auch norddeutsche) Variante von Wilhelm und bezeichnet mit Vornamen: Willem Barents (um 1550–1597), niederländischer Seefahrer und Entdecker Willem Boerdam (1883–1966), niederländischer …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Dafoe —   [də fəʊ], Willem, amerikanischer Schauspieler, * Appleton (Wisconsis) 22. 7. 1955; spielte an amerikanischen Avantgardetheatern, ehe er 1980 zum Film kam; Schauspieler mit breitem Rollenspektrum.   Filme: Die Lieblosen (1980); Platoon (1986);… …   Universal-Lexikon

  • Willem Dafoe — Уиллем Дефо Willem Dafoe Имя при рождении: Уильям Дефо Дата рождения: 22 июля 1955 (53 года) …   Википедия

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