Willem Dafoe

Born William James Dafoe in Appleton, Wisconsin, Dafoe grew up in a large family. His father, William Alfred Dafoe, was a surgeon, and his mother, Muriel, was a nurse. He adopted the name Willem during his teenage years after a friend used it as an alternative to William or Billy, and eventually became more accustomed to it than his birth name.

Dafoe studied theater at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and acted in productions of Phaedra and Moon for the Misbegotten. He left the university after 18 months to join the experimental Theater X in Milwaukee. After moving to New York in 1976, he joined the Performance Group and became involved with Elizabeth LeCompte and the artists who formed the experimental theater company The Wooster Group. Dafoe was one of the company's co-founders and performed with it in the United States and internationally for decades.

Dafoe made his film debut with a small, uncredited appearance in Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate (1980). His first leading role came in The Loveless (1981), a biker drama directed by Monty Montgomery and Kathryn Bigelow. He followed it with roles in The Hunger, Streets of Fire, and To Live and Die in L.A., in which he played the counterfeiter Rick Masters.

Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986) became Dafoe's breakthrough. He played the compassionate Sergeant Elias Grodin in the Vietnam War drama and received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Dafoe later portrayed Jesus Christ in Martin Scorsese's controversial The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), while his other late-1980s roles included Mississippi Burning and Born on the Fourth of July.

Dafoe continued exploring morally ambiguous and unconventional characters in films such as Tom & Viv, The English Patient, and The Boondock Saints. His performance as the fictionalized German actor Max Schreck in Shadow of the Vampire (2000) earned his second Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe nomination.

Dafoe became a major mainstream star as Norman Osborn and his alter ego, the Green Goblin, in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (2002). The role required him to express much of the villain's emotion through his voice and head movements because the Green Goblin mask concealed his face. He reprised Norman Osborn in Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007), then returned to the role in Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), confronting Tobey Maguire's version of Peter Parker.

His voice work expanded his audience beyond live-action cinema. He voiced Gill, a Moorish idol fish, in Pixar's Finding Nemo (2003) and reprised the character in Finding Dory (2016). He also voiced characters in Fantastic Mr. Fox, Tales from Earthsea, and the English-language version of Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron.

Dafoe balanced blockbuster projects with independent and auteur cinema. His credits include The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Grand Budapest Hotel, A Most Wanted Man, The Fault in Our Stars, and John Wick, in which he played Marcus, a mentor to Keanu Reeves's former assassin. He also worked repeatedly with Wes Anderson, Paul Schrader, Lars von Trier, Abel Ferrara, and other prominent directors.

Dafoe's later career brought renewed awards recognition. In Sean Baker's The Florida Project (2017), he played Bobby, a protective motel manager, earning his third Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. The following year he portrayed Vincent van Gogh in Julian Schnabel's At Eternity's Gate, winning the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival and receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

In Robert Eggers's The Lighthouse (2019), Dafoe played the lighthouse keeper Thomas Wake opposite Robert Pattinson. The performance earned him the Independent Spirit Award and a Satellite Award. He later reunited with Eggers for The Northman and Nosferatu, portraying Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz in the latter film.

Dafoe also appeared in Aquaman, Togo, Nightmare Alley, The French Dispatch, Inside, Asteroid City, and Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things. As the disfigured scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter in Poor Things, he received Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations. His later films included Lanthimos's Kinds of Kindness, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Saturday Night, The Legend of Ochi, and Wes Anderson's The Phoenician Scheme.

Dafoe was in a long-term relationship with theater director Elizabeth LeCompte, whom he met after joining the Performance Group in New York. They had one son, Jack, born in 1982, and separated in 2004. They were never married.

Dafoe met Italian actress and filmmaker Giada Colagrande in 2004 and married her on March 25, 2005, one day after he proposed. They worked together on Colagrande's films Before It Had a Name and A Woman, as well as other projects. Dafoe and Colagrande have divided their time between Rome and New York, and he acquired Italian citizenship through the marriage.