1955-present
Latest News: Willem Dafoe Stars in Nosferatu
More than two decades after playing a ravenous vampire, Willem Dafoe finds himself hunting one in the upcoming gothic horror movie Nosferatu.
The 69-year-old actor, who received an Academy Award nomination as fictionalized Max Schreck in 2000’s Shadow of the Vampire, has revealed few details about his latest role as Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz. “I play kind of a Van Helsing type of character. It’s an invented character, but it’s a good character, and I’m excited about that,” Dafoe told Deadline.
Nosferatu marks another collaboration between Dafoe and director Robert Eggers, who previously worked together for the 2019 psychological horror The Lighthouse and the 2022 Viking epic The Northman. Arriving in theaters on Christmas Day, the movie is a remake of Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror from 1922, which was loosely based on Bram Stoker’s famous novel Dracula. Nosteratu also stars Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, and Lily-Rose Depp.
Who Is Willem Dafoe?
Four-time Oscar nominee Willem Dafoe is known for the movies Platoon, The Florida Project, and the Spider-Man trilogy of the 2000s. A theater performer during his teenage and college years, the actor made his credited screen debut in the 1981 drama The Loveless. Dafoe, known for his expressive face and dedication to arthouse films, has since contributed to more than 100 movies and earned a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Dafoe appears in the upcoming 2024 horror movie Nosferatu.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: William James Dafoe
BORN: July 22, 1955
BIRTHPLACE: Appleton, Wisconsin
SPOUSE: Giada Colagrande (2005-present)
CHILD: Jack
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Cancer
Young Willem Dafoe
William James Dafoe, commonly known as Willem Dafoe, was born on July 22, 1955, in Appleton, Wisconsin. He is seventh of eight children. His father, William Dafoe Sr., was a gastrointestinal surgeon, while his mother, Muriel, worked as a nurse at her husband’s practice.
Young William picked up his modified first name during his teenage years. Instead of the shorthand Bill or more formal William Jr., he preferred a friend’s alternative moniker of Willem. “You know, you want your own identity and, when I was a kid, I was always seeking a nickname,” he said on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. “I didn’t even know how to spell [Willem], and then the irony was by the time I became an actor, to go back to my birth name felt like a stage name. So the truth is, I just stuck with the name that I felt like.”
Because his father treated a large group of patients across rural northeast Wisconsin, Dafoe has said his parents spent a lot of time away from home. Some of his most formative childhood experiences were visiting his siblings at the University of Wisconsin as a teenager. “Growing up in Wisconsin with kind of good, well-educated, Eisenhower-era Republican parents, and then seeing my brothers and sisters get radicalized through their going out in the world, I think it had a big effect on me,” he said on the podcast WTF with Marc Maron. Experiencing the active protest culture and more liberal art scene on the Madison campus greatly influenced the young performer’s ambitions, musical taste, style, and politics.
Dafoe showed an interest in the performance arts from an early age, writing his own plays about historical events and figures. When he was around 11, he joined a summer theater group that performed at nearby Lawrence University. The budding actor later attended Appleton East High School but was expelled over the contents of a documentary he intended to make. He completed his graduation requirement by attending a class at Lawrence.
Dafoe told Maron he considered joining the army but decided to stay with his future brother-in-law in Milwaukee and attended classes at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He took multiple theater courses and acted in school productions of Phaedra in 1973 and Moon for the Misbegotten in 1974.
The allure of being a performer ultimately convinced Dafoe to drop out after the fall 1974 semester. He was a member of the experimental theater company Theater X until 1976, when he moved to New York City. There, he continued to hone his stage craft with the Wooster Group and await his first onscreen role.
Movies: Platoon, Spider-Man, and More
Dafoe appeared in his first movie with a small uncredited role in the 1980 Western movie Heaven’s Gate. The actor explained to Vanity Fair that he earned the part by pretending he was fluent in Dutch at his audition but was fired during filming after director Michael Cimino learned otherwise. Although his role was largely cut, he is still visible in the background of multiple scenes.
His first true role came the following year in The Loveless, a biker drama directed by Monty Montgomery and future Academy Award winner Kathryn Bigelow. “I’m attracted to strong directors, auteur directors, directors that really like to do something. You like to be around those people. They inspire you,” Dafoe said of the experience. The actor followed with minor roles in movies such as The Hunger (1983), Streets of Fire (1984), and To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) before an acclaimed war film catalyzed his path to prominence.
Breakout Roles: Platoon and The Last Temptation of Christ
In 1986, Dafoe played Sergeant Elias in Platoon, a dramatized account of the Vietnam War from director Oliver Stone. Featuring an ensemble cast including Tom Berenger, Charlie Sheen, and Forest Whitaker, the movie drew praise for its realistic depiction of combat and acting performances. Platoon received eight Academy Award nominations—including Dafoe’s first for Best Supporting Actor—and ultimately won Best Picture.
Dafoe then had one of his most controversial roles in 1988, portraying Jesus Christ in the Martin Scorsese drama The Last Temptation of Christ. Based on a 1955 novel of the same name, the movie gave an alternative account of the Bible’s New Testament by depicting Jesus with a more traditional life that included his own family. The movie drew intense criticism from Christian groups, and multiple theater companies refused to show it.
“I thought it was also ridiculous in this– you know, in a world of slasher movies and porn and all this stuff, that this is a movie about spirituality,” Dafoe recounted to Newstalk. “I think, you know, the political controversy happened. Clearly, you know, people didn’t even see it. They just didn’t like the idea that you mess with the story.”
Once the backlash for Last Temptation simmered down, Dafoe appeared in movies across multiple genres, including Stone’s next war film Born on the Fourth of July (1989); the erotic thriller Body of Evidence (1993), alongside Madonna; the period drama The English Patient (1996); the cult crime film The Boondock Saints (1999); and the film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel American Psycho (2000), starring Christian Bale and Reese Witherspoon.
Dafoe received his first Golden Globe nomination and second Academy Award nomination for his supporting role in the horror mystery Shadow of the Vampire (2000), in which a film crew suspects a real bloodsucker is on set. Two years later, Dafoe cemented his star status in one of the biggest summer blockbusters of all time.
Green Goblin in Spider-Man
In 2002, Dafoe reached a new level of mainstream recognition playing Norman Osborn and his villainous alter ego, the Green Goblin, in the superhero movie Spider-Man. The movie pitted Dafoe against Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker and the titular Marvel comics character.
According to ABC News, John Malkovich was originally slated to play Osborn, but the actor couldn’t reach an agreement with production company Columbia Pictures. Meanwhile, Dafoe spoke with director Sam Raimi about the screenplay during a two-hour phone call and eventually stepped in. “I thought, this guy is not cynical about this story. He deeply loves his characters and feels an obligation as a Spider-Man fan to present these characters truthfully,” Dafoe told the BBC. “So I thought, there’s something else going on here besides a hardware movie.”
Dafoe’s instincts about Raimi and the movie were correct: Spider-Man grossed more than $825 million worldwide, the highest ever for a superhero movie at the time. Dafoe, who spent his scenes as the Goblin masked and only able to emote through his voice and head movements, received praise for his performance. Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers called him a “wild, warped wonder.”
Dafoe reprised the part for cameo appearances in the sequels Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007), as well as the 2021 multiverse movie Spider-Man: No Way Home featuring Maguire as his adversary once again.
Dramatic Roles: The Florida Project and At Eternity’s Gate
After Spider-Man, Dafoe lent his voice as Gill the fish in another box-office behemoth: the Disney and Pixar animated journey Finding Nemo (2003). The move grossed more than $871 million worldwide, making it Dafoe’s most lucrative project at that point. He then teamed with Martin Scorsese again for a supporting role in the Oscar-winning 2004 biopic The Aviator about Howard Hughes.
Dafoe had proven his worth in big-money blockbusters, but the actor wasn’t afraid to lend his talents to less prominent and more experimental projects. In 2004, he made his first appearance in a Wes Anderson movie as Klaus Daimler in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Dafoe has appeared in a number of Anderson’s later works, including the animated Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), The French Dispatch (2021), and Asteroid City (2023).
Polarizing director Lars von Trier similarly welcomed Dafoe for multiple movies, including 2005’s Manderlay, the 2009 psychological drama Antichrist—which reportedly caused four people to faint during the Cannes Film Festival because of its graphic violence—and Nymphomaniac: Vol. II (2013).
By 2017, Dafoe was back in the conversation for major awards with The Florida Project, in which he played a protective hotel manager in a movie about a young girl and her single mother who live in the hotel. He received Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations for best supporting actor.
The following year, he drew additional acclaim for his portrayal of artist Vincent Van Gogh in the biographical movie At Eternity’s Gate. Dafoe won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival and again received Golden Globe and Oscar nominations for lead actor. Dafoe and the film are memorialized in the popular “Willem Dafoe Looking Up” internet meme, which shows the actor as Van Gogh peering skyward with his mouth agape.
Nosferatu and Upcoming Movies
In his 60s, Dafoe has remained as busy as ever in front of the camera. He had parts in movies such as Aquaman (2018), The Lighthouse (2019), Nightmare Alley (2021), The Northman (2022), and Inside (2023).
Dafoe was credited with seven appearances total in 2023, including a voice part in the English version of the animated adventure The Boy and the Heron from director Hayao Miyazaki and a supporting role in the Oscar-nominated Poor Things. The latter, starring Emma Stone, earned Dafoe a Golden Globe nomination.
To start 2024, Dafoe received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the industry. “It’s real humbling to be here and to be part of this,” Dafoe said of the honor. Onscreen, the actor teamed up again with Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos for the anthology movie Kinds of Kindness, again starring Stone as well as Jesse Plemons. Dafoe also appeared in the sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Saturday Night, a comedy-drama about the first episode of TV sketch comedy Saturday Night Live.
Dafoe next plays vampire hunter Albin Eberhart Von Franz in Nosferatu, a remake of the classic 1922 horror movie of the same name. He also stars in the 2025 movie The Legend of Ochi and will appear in The Phoenician Scheme, an upcoming ensemble comedy directed by Wes Anderson.
Wife and Son
In 2004, Dafoe met Italian actor and filmmaker Giada Colagrande while in Rome. The couple wed in March 2005, with the marriage taking place only one day after Dafoe’s proposal. Dafoe was 49 and Colagrande 29 at the time.
The pair have also worked together on multiple projects, with Colagrande directing Dafoe in 2010’s A Woman and later 2016’s Padre. Colagrande and Dafoe split their time living in New York City and Rome. Dafoe is officially an Italian citizen and fluent in the language.
Prior to meeting Colagrande, Dafoe was in a 27-year relationship with theater director Elizabeth LeCompte. The former couple has one son, Jack, born in 1982.
Net Worth
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Dafoe’s total fortune is estimated around $40 million as of October 2024.
Quotes
- I’m really just making it up as I go along. I’m not that career-driven. I mean, I consider career to the extent that I’m always looking to create new opportunities and do the things I like to do, but I’m actually quite simple-minded.
- The beautiful thing about every new movie is that you get to remake your take on what you do as an actor. It’s different every time. Different movies require different performances, different points of view. You have to bring something different to the game.
- It’s only risky if it’s not risky, you know what I mean? If it’s a real risk, you’re trying something. Something will happen, something will be learned.
- Almost all actors are terrified. And if they aren’t, they’re either drunk or they don’t give a s—.
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Tyler Piccotti joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor and is now the News and Culture Editor. He previously worked as a reporter and copy editor for a daily newspaper recognized by the Associated Press Sports Editors. In his current role, he shares the true stories behind your favorite movies and TV shows and profiles rising musicians, actors, and athletes. When he's not working, you can find him at the nearest amusement park or movie theater and cheering on his favorite teams.
