WILLEM DAFOE. photo by Elisa Leonelli (c) 1988
In my long career as entertainment journalist, I interviewed Willem Dafoe numerous times during the past 40 years, and I always liked him. This year I noticed his engaging performances in four movies. He was directed for the sixth time by Paul Schrader (after Light Sleeper, Affliction, Auto Focus, The Walker, Adam Resurrected) in The Card Counter with Oscar Isaac. He said: “Paul and I share a similar interest in marginal characters who have a unique perspective on the world.” He had a cameo in The French Dispatch by Wes Anderson, who had directed him in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and The Grand Budapest Hotel. He played the carnival impresario in Nightmare Alley directed by Guillermo del Toro with Bradley Cooper and Cate Blanchett. He returned as Norman Osborn/Green Goblin in Spider-Man: No Way Home, having played the Marvel villain in Spider-Man directed by Sam Raimi with Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker.
WILLEM DAFOE (c) Elisa Leonelli 1988
So I decided to feature him on the Golden Globes website in my monthly column of historic quotes from the HFPA Archives, as he talked about playing Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ by Martin Scorsese. Click here to read. 1988 was the year that I took some photographic portraits after the interview.
In 2018 I had written his profile when the journalists of the Hollywood Foreign Press nominated him to his third Golden Globe for playing Vincent van Gogh in At Eternity’s Gate by Julian Schnabel with Oscar Isaac as Paul Gaugin.
Elisa Leonelli, Willem Dafoe (c) HFPA 2002
I love it that he appreciates my country’s lifestyle: “The Italians are geniuses at balancing work and leisure. The culture is integrated into everybody’s life in a way that I really admire, not just in the performing arts and visual arts, but in a sense of cultural history and fine cuisine. So it’s a good life.”
Text and photos by Elisa Leonelli