Willem Dafoe Quotes
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It's too easy to trivialize people. The Internet does it all the time.
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Trust is always a factor. You've just got to look at the big picture, and you've got to look at the small picture - the small picture in the sense that you've got to make every scene work and you've got to deal with what people are presenting you with, too.
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As you get older, you suffer fools less easily. That's why there's all those cranky character actors. I'm an exception. I'm a sweetheart.
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The truth is I like the crazy ones better than the well-behaved ones normally because they tend to be the passionate ones. They never come after you if you're holding up your end. The only thing that's bad about an abusive director is that they bully the people they can.
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I am confident only when I am constantly in motion. Between projects, the doubt creeps in.
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Action breeds inspiration more than inspiration breeds action.
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The real difficulty for smaller films, when they're made independently and it's time to go for a distributor, sometimes if it's a tough film and the people who financed it need their money back right away, it's much easier and lucrative to take a DVD deal.
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I'm no different to anyone else; I want people to like me. I just don't particularly want them to understand me.
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You have to lose yourself to find yourself.
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Mounting those red stairs [in Cannes] is something I've done with a very different intention many times. So it's interesting any time you witness those shifts of perspective. The beach scenes were also fun. It felt very strange and very theatrical to kind of commandeer it and have La Mer booming over the speakers.
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With theatre, you have to be ready for anything.
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The best thing an actor can be is ready. Be flexible, be ready.
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Sometimes you make very interesting movies that aren't meant for everybody. But this is a capitalist society, so everything conspires to put value on whether it sells or not.
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All the time, as an actor, you want to be asking what's next and where things are going. If you're not asking those questions, you're not growing.
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I'm one of those people who when I go over a bridge, I want to jump. It's just this intense tickle in the back of my throat. It's like I'm on the verge the whole time I'm walking over that bridge, and I'm not going to get a release until I jump.
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I've been in very few flat-out comedies. But I feel like I've always made comedies.
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That's a frustration sometimes, that certain directors that I'd like to work with, they just aren't doing stories that I'm sort of castable in. Not always, but sometimes I have that frustration.
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Usually when you meet with a director, just meeting them after you've seen something you're interested in, they say, "Oh I'd love to work together," and sometimes you never hear from them again.
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Celebrity is okay as long as you know it's not about you.
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I like to work with people of different cultures, different points of view. But yeah, I feel much more comfortable. That's the problem I sometimes have with going to Hollywood. I feel like they don't share the same values as I do. They aren't interested in the same things. It's not always true, but sometimes, I feel it deeply, because as an industry, they celebrate things that I'm less interested in, and it's all about the business.
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It makes me laugh when I hear a guy talking about being in touch with his feminine side. But I gravitate towards women, I identify with them. And I do cry very easily, more and more as I get older.
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When I was a kid I was very interested in the idea of the will, finding out what you're capable of. I liked those kind of challenges.
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I try to do as many of my own stunts as possible. If you keep on taking yourself out of the role you play, you lose the thread of the character.
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The bad things about theatre get balanced by the good things in film and vice versa. So to tell you the truth, I love it when I can go back and forth - it feeds different parts of you and exercises different muscles.
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I wish to Christ I could make up a really great lie. Sometimes, after an interview, I say to myself, 'Man, you were so honest - can't you have some fun? Can't you do some really down and dirty lying?' But the puritan in me thinks that if I tell a lie, I'll be punished.
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I don't think people are interested in my personal life. I've never had a Hollywood life. I've always been a worker.
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I think on some level, you do your best things when you're a little off-balance, a little scared. You've got to work from mystery, from wonder, from not knowing.
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It's true in the beginning I started playing villains, and I think that's pretty clear, because if you don't conventionally look a certain way and you've got a certain kind of presence when you're young, then what's available to you is character roles, and the best character roles when you're young tend to be villains.
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If you get stuck and it feels a little stiff, then you do have to mess it up to find it. But other times it's really written and you just stick to your guns and do it as elegantly and as concentrated and as committed as you can.
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Turn off the sound in a movie, and if you can tell what's going on, the movie should work.
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