Why Willem Dafoe Likes To Play Characters Who Die

For those who’ve ever seen Willem Dafoe in a film, chances are high you have watched him die. He is been stabbed, shot, blown up, crucified, burned alive, and, in a single memorable occasion, impaled by his personal goblin-themed glider. (In one other particularly memorable scene, he was even buried alive after which axe-murdered.) “Title a film: I am useless!” Dafoe as soon as joked. Requested to clarify his curious behavior of dying, he quipped, “They only at all times wanna kill me!”

Dafoe actually has a selected expertise for dying. His demise in a hail of bullets in “Platoon” created such a placing picture that it grew to become the film’s poster. However whereas his mastery of loss of life scenes may tempt administrators to solid him as characters who die dramatically, Dafoe himself has additionally admitted that he is drawn to such roles. 

In a current interview with Empire journal, Dafoe was requested about Robert Eggers 2022 movie “The Northman,” through which he performs a jester who’s killed (off-screen) early on but continues to behave as a non secular information to the protagonist in his new existence as a decapitated, mummified head. Dafoe described his character’s life after loss of life as “stunning” and admitted that it was “a part of the enticement” to the film: 

“I imply, I knew that there was going to be that little head and… you recognize, it is good to have a great entrance and a great exit.”

Dying actually makes for an efficient and dramatic goodbye, whether or not it is from a film or from a very boring social gathering. However there’s extra to Dafoe’s love of fictional deaths than desirous to exit in model.

Films are a method for audiences to expertise the joys of journey, the phobia of horror, and the grief of tragedy with out really placing their very own lives in peril. For actors, they’ve the same enchantment. When requested why he likes taking part in characters who die a lot, Dafoe advised Empire that “it raises the stakes.” He added:

“Everybody, until they’re asleep, has an creativeness about their loss of life. So while you’re in a bit fiction, attending to play out this type of fantasy of imagining a model of what might occur to you, even in these excessive instances, one thing about that have is elevated. It is not regular. It is very particular and it is private, but it surely’s not you, as a result of the circumstances are usually not of your life.”

Whereas no dwelling particular person is aware of what it feels prefer to die (at the least, not completely), the worry of dying is hard-wired into us, and it is a really accessible emotion for actors like Dafoe to faucet into. Dying itself is inevitable, and Dafoe sees loss of life scenes in films as a form of rehearsal for the actual factor and a method of confronting the worry of our personal mortality. “To enact [one’s death], even with none actual threat or any actual actuality, is a wonderful train,” he defined. “I am certain someplace there are some rituals in varied cultures the place it is carried out to assist folks put together for his or her loss of life.”

Empire interviewer Alex Godfrey later quoted a 1987 interview through which Dafoe stated: “A efficiency is sort of a life that I flail angrily by way of till it is over.” Requested if he nonetheless feels that method, the actor replied, “Generally I do […] I am a special particular person now, however that sounds okay. I do not thoughts being tagged by that.”