When Willem Dafoe Turned a Photo Shoot for AnOther Magazine on Its Head

This story is taken from the Spring/Summer 2003 issue of AnOther Magazine: 

When Willem Dafoe walked into the studio he turned the tables on the idea of a photo shoot. He put on the clothes and assumed the characters of the photographer, stylist, publicist, groomer, and only then the model, to create a performance.

Dafoe has one of the most distinctive faces in Hollywood. Oscar Wilde could have taken his features as a starting point for his portrait of Dorian Gray. Dafoe is of course impossibly handsome, but there is something unholy about his sharp nose, steep cheekbones and full lips. His medieval features have sustained a career of screen outcasts: soldiers, priests and perverts. He was buck-toothed and sleazy in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, feral and bloodsucking in A Shadow of a Vampire and now downright dirty in Paul Schrader’s Auto Focus. There have been nobler roles – The Last Temptation of Christ and Mississippi Burning among them – but it’s the misfits he’s remembered for, most memorably the natural-born soldier Sgt Elias in Oliver Stone’s Platoon.

“I’m drawn to characters to operate on the margins of society,” he says by way of explanation. But despite these singular roles Dafoe is rarely recognised on the streets of New York and is often mistaken for a European actor by Hollywood. “Would you believe it,” he says with a drawl straight out of Brooklyn, “people ask me where I picked up my accent.”

It is his energy and athleticism with which he pitches himself into role, stretching to fit character, that gives Dafoe a chameleon quality. He compares acting to voodoo, stepping into another body.

“I approach acting physically, like a dancer, which probably sounds a little pat. But for me, the best performance is where you are absolutely insignificant but at the same time, the centre of everything.”

But the Los Angeles movie machine has never known quite what to make of him. Most actors cut their teeth in the theatre – one step of many on the road to stardom. But for 20 years Dafoe has continued to perform on stage with The Wooster Group, New York’s fearlessly experimental theatre company. Dafoe’s Yank, in the company’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s 20s classic, The Hairy Ape, delivered at breakneck speed, was hailed by critics as a performance of astonishing depth.

Dafoe chooses movie roles that interest him with directors he respects. He makes his home in New York rather than Los Angeles. While he understands the importance of awards and accolades (he has picked up two Oscar nominations) he is personally ambivalent. And in an industry where everyone wants to be an insider, there is a certain charm to being on the outside. “Success can be the very thing that kills you,” he says, “I prefer to be a visitor in Hollywood.”

Grooming Rita Marmor. Photographic assistant Jonathon Ragle. Styling assistant Cassie Leszik. Production Ben Hams at MAP NY. Shot at 5th and Sunset NY. Printing Chris Cooke at Goldenshot. Special thanks to Handie Erickson and Leone Iannou at 5th and Sunset NY.

This story features in the Spring/Summer 2003 issue of AnOther Magazine.