William James Dafoe (/dfo/;[1] July 22, 1955) is an American actor. [191] They split their time between Rome, Los Angeles, and New York City. [129], Dafoe's first of two leading roles in 2011 was in Abel Ferrara's apocalyptic drama 4:44 Last Day on Earth, his third film with Ferrara. "[4], Gross and Hill would work out their ideas in detail. He studied theatre at the University of Wisconsin but left school to join Theater X, an experimental Wisconsin-based theatre troupe with which Dafoe toured for four years. This was the fastest ever greenlight Hill had received and he put it down to the box office success of 48 Hours. Raven meets with Ed Price, the head of the police department, and promises him no more trouble if he arranges for Tom to meet with him alone. [82] In the same year, Dafoe appeared in a small but pivotal role as a drug cartel kingpin planning a coup d'tat against the President of Mexico in Robert Rodriguez's action film Once Upon a Time in Mexico. [35] Dafoe starred in the drama Triumph of the Spirit in 1989 as Jewish Greek boxer Salamo Arouch, an Auschwitz concentration camp inmate who was forced to fight other internees to death for the Nazi officers' entertainment. You can't do that on a movie set. Remember: You had John Hughes at the time, and then you had Coppola making two high school movies: The Outsiders and Rumble Fish. . Steinman has said the filmmakers were convinced they would have the rights to the Bruce Springsteen song "Streets of Fire", and filmed an ending using it. I always said whenever someone says fantasy they immediately think of more Disney-esque. And I thought that we had done what we set out to do. Daily, who played Baby Doll, says it was "a very frustrating thing for me" to not sing in the film "Because Diane Lane was singing, and I remember thinking 'Ah!' Perhaps his best-known role was as Sgt. I got the gun. Director Walter Hill Writers Walter Hill Larry Gross Stars Michael Par Diane Lane Rick Moranis See production, box office & company info Watch on Prime Video rent/buy from $3.99 More watch options Add to Watchlist 3 yr. ago. Hill was unhappy with that score and liked music Cooder had written for Stroker Ace which the director of that film had not wanted to use.[21]. Larry Gross recalls the filmmakers were optimistic prior to release: We all knew in our hearts that Michael was disappointing. I was told by Joel Silver that the sequel was going to be set in the snow, and the following film would be set in the desert. A world where it's raining all the time. Willem Dafoe. It's such a hard-shelled picture that it barely has moods. The same year, Dafoe played Vincent van Gogh in the biographical drama At Eternity's Gate, for which he received the Volpi Cup for Best Actor and an Academy Award for Best Actor nomination among other awards and accolades. I blamed you but you can't be upset with me. Gross recalls that about five weeks into the 14-week shoot: I turned to Walter and said "This movie is somewhat weirder than we thoughtWe just didn't anticipate what the combination of elements was going to be. [10] His surname, Dafoe, is the English version of the Swiss surname Thvou. Nowhe neglected to mention that some fairy tales are very violent. [87] Dafoe was next seen in the comedy-drama The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), his first of three films with director Wes Anderson. AKA: Streets of Fire (eng), Streets of Fire 1984 (eng) Movie Rating:6.7 / 10 (22407) [ Tonight is what it means to be young. ] [65][66] The film performed poorly at the box office, but has since been branded as being a cult film. Or punch them. We learned later that, I believe, Eisner rejected it on the grounds that it was too similar to Indiana Jones. [191] They have since worked together on her films Before It Had a Name and A Woman. Maybe if we'd had Tom Cruise, we might have had a success. His nickname is Dafoe William (birth name). Streets of Fire (1984) - Willem Dafoe as Raven - IMDb [149], In May 2014, Dafoe served as member of the main competition jury at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. Peter Keough of Boston Globe said Dafoe "may be the best actor around for expressing an inner life in extremis."[171]. Tom bids farewell to Ellen, promising that hell always be there for her if she needs him. (Laughs)[15]. [3] However, this presented unusual problems. I guess maybe I am. It's a very real-world film, in some respects, but it's very artificial at the same time We did that again, but we put the emphasis on the artifice. [47] Later in 1993, Dafoe appeared in a supporting role as Emit Flesti (an anagram of Time Itself) in the German fantasy film Faraway, So Close!, directed by Wim Wenders. The Richlands. The point is that we had in mind one sentence inspired by George Lucas: "in a galaxy long ago", a futuristic past. [142] In Scott Cooper's Out of the Furnace (2013), starring Christian Bale, Dafoe played the supporting role of a bookmaker running an illegal gambling operation. on Twitter: "post 4 screen shots of your comfort movie Streets of Fire (1984) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more. [5], According to Gross, Hill wanted to make a film about the hero of the comic book, but since he did not like "any of the comic books" he had read he wanted it to be an original character. Gross says they wanted Tom Cruise and made him an offer, but he had already accepted another role. Argyle prints and plaids are used in the Parkside District, and neon lights color the Strip.[3]. [84] Dafoe lent his voice and likeness to the James Bond video game James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing (2004) as the villain Nikolai Diavolo. The critic Peter Brunette felt the cast's performances, especially Dafoe's, were unconvincing. [152] His final film of 2014 was the action thriller John Wick starring Keanu Reeves, in which Dafoe appeared as the mentor to the titular character, a former hitman who is forced out of retirement to seek vengeance for the killing of his puppy. Dafoe gained wider attention for his role as the supervillain Norman Osborn / Green Goblin in the superhero film Spider-Man (2002), a role he reprised in its sequels Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007), and the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). I don't think there was any other way to do it given the circumstances.[8]. Tom Cody : I think you're forgettin' somethin'. We got the songs a lot of times just a few days before we shoot. It's about excitement, it's about thrills. With the assistance of a hard-as-nails woman warrior (Madigan) and manager Billy Fish (Moranis), he enters a shocking world of neon-lit streets, fast cars, and killer assassins lurking around every corner. "People think that he doesn't like women and he knows that's not true. Although three districts are seen, the city has a total of five districts: the Richmond, the Strip, the Battery, the Cliffside, and the Bayside. It's not New York. "[4], They submitted the script to Universal executive Bob Rehme on a Friday (in January 1983) and by the end of the weekend, the studio had given them the go-ahead to make the film. The movie's bigness of sizecompositionallychanged the meaning of things and made it more of a fairy taleThe Warriors, it was bewoven with a unique sense of realism. He made his film debut in Heaven's Gate (1980), but was fired during production and was uncredited despite one of his scenes making it into the final cut of the film. [8] He recalled in 2009, "My five sisters raised me because my father was a surgeon, my mother was a nurse and they worked together, so I didn't see either of them much. Osborn is a family friend of Spider-Man's secret identity Peter Parker as Osborn's son, Harry Osborn (played by James Franco), is a close friend of Parker. [74], Dafoe played the supervillain the Green Goblin in Sam Raimi's 2002 superhero film Spider-Man, starring Tobey Maguire as the titular Marvel Comics superhero. - Michael Par plays a biker who agrees to rescue his ex-girlfriend (a rocker played by Diane Lane) from kidnappers (led by Willem Dafoe). Through the 80's his prominence rose in films like Streets of Fire and To Live and Die in L.A. Perhaps one of Dafoe's, nay cinema's, most iconic moments (and the subject of countless . Action Crime Drama A mercenary is hired to rescue his ex-girlfriend, a singer who has been kidnapped by a motorcycle gang. Following tensions between Schechner and other members after they started staging their own productions outside of the group, Schechner left and the remaining members (including LeCompte and her ex-boyfriend Spalding Gray) renamed themselves The Wooster Group. He used to frequent gun clubs and he wasn't a very delicate guyWe were doing a love scene. Larry Gross later said they were affected "as everyone was at the time" by the success of Flashdance and they decided during writing that the film would be a musical: We said this movie is a stylized movie, it's not so different from the world of a musical. [90] Also in 2004, Dafoe narrated the documentary Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate, chronicling the production of Heaven's Gate and co-starred as a neuropharmacologist in the direct-to-video thriller Control (2004) alongside Ray Liotta and Michelle Rodriguez. [26] Los Angeles Times writer Sheila Benson praised his performance and found it to be "particularly fine" to see Dafoe play "something other than a psychopath". The story concerns a lawyer, played by Dafoe, who engages in a sadomasochistic sexual relationship with the woman he is representing in a murder case. Dafoe portrayed John Henry Carpenter, an electronics expert who develops a strange friendship with the actor Bob Crane, leading Crane into a downward spiral. [150] He was next featured in a supporting role as a mean-spirited, alcoholic author who is visited by a pair of cancer patients, who are played by Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort, in the romantic drama The Fault in Our Stars. William Dafoe in Streets of Fire (1984) : r/OldSchoolCool - Reddit [139], In 2013, Dafoe played a police officer in the supernatural thriller Odd Thomas, starring Anton Yelchin as the titular character that possesses supernatural powers to see the dead. To the point where I thought it was going to do well. Janet Maslin of The New York Times felt there were no great performances in the film, but praised Dafoe's "perfectly villainous" face. [112], Dafoe appeared in seven films in 2009, the first of which was in Lars von Trier's experimental film Antichrist. It could still be tough and strong and have a woman do it without rewriting the part. Dafoe received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for Oliver Stone's war film Platoon (1986). Tom and Raven duel using sledgehammers and their fists, with Tom ultimately being victorious. I really freaked out. The movie screened very, very well. [163], In 2017, Dafoe co-starred in Sean Baker's drama The Florida Project as the manager of a motel in Kissimmee, Florida who houses a toxic mother and her six-year-old daughter. It is described in its opening credits and posters as "A Rock & Roll. In the drama Pavilion of Women, he played an American priest living in China who falls in love with a local married woman (played by the film's screenwriter Luo Yan) while giving her son a Western education. "[4], On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 68% of 28 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.10/10. I later realized or talked to people about this and MGM in the old days everybody was on contract and they would rehearse for weeks. I said, where'd you hear that? Raven confronts Tom and warns him that he will be coming for Ellen and for him, too. Streets of Fire (1984) - Full Cast & Crew - IMDb [179][180][181], Dafoe reprised his role as Green Goblin from Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Spider-Man: No Way Home, released on December 17, 2021. The film garnered a poor reaction critics, with a reviewer for Paste stating "there's only so much depth [Dafoe] can bring to such a shallow character". Wolf Totem 1.28K subscribers Streets of Fire is a 1984 film directed by Walter Hill and co-written by Hill and Larry Gross. Billy tries to get rid of the corrupt police officers by bribing them, but Tom and McCoy have to resort to holding the police at gunpoint and shooting up their vehicles. Walter Hill later said he felt "humbled" by the shoot: I think I thought I could handle things. The role required Dafoe to wear an uncomfortable costume and mask that made it impossible to emote using his face, confining Dafoe to convey emotion through his voice and head movements. I'm just not that handy with that. Eliot coping with his wifes emotional disintegration in Tom and Viv (1994) and appeared in The English Patient (1996), an adaptation of the novel by Michael Ondaatje. 7 Early Willem Dafoe Performances You Need to See | Tribeca The subway scenes were filmed on location in Chicago at many locations, including LaSalle Street (Blue line), Lake Street (Green line), Sheridan Road (Red, Purple lines), and Belmont Avenue (Red, Brown, and Purple lines). [42] Dafoe had two lead roles in 1992. Screenwriter Larry Gross said the film has been influential: Whatever is good, bad or indifferent about Streets of Fire, it had a huge impact on other filmmakers. This was tough stuff to shoot. [11] Jim Steinman was brought in to write the opening and closing songs, and "Streets of Fire" was replaced by "Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young". But our commitment to be stylized was thorough and conscious and maybe too extreme for the mainstream audience. Rick Moranis, Diane Lane, and Willem Dafoe in the opening - Reddit Although the film was largely dismissed by critics,[62] critic David Stratton found there to be "compensation" in the performances. Notable roles include in The English Patient (1996), American Psycho (2000), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), Antichrist (2009), John Wick (2014), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Murder on the Orient Express (2017), The Lighthouse (2019), The French Dispatch (2021), Nightmare Alley (2021), and The Northman (2022). And Willem Dafoe is the greaser. You've got to be careful because you've got to work with what you have, not just for vanity's sake, but I think the best part of being an actor sometimes is the opportunity to transform yourself superficially, and deeply. Search News Random Tilda Swinton Says She Won't Wear A Mask On Set Despite COVID Safety Protocols Nicholas Laskin I got those best friend of the leads, quirky, funny characters. He was used to working with actors who had experience like Nick Nolte or David Carradine. The Ardmore Police roadblock was filmed near 6th street in East Los Angeles, near the flood basin. [5] More than 50 motorcycles and their drivers were featured as the Bombers, and were chosen from 200 members of real L.A.-based clubs like The Crusaders and The Heathens. Two songs written by Jim Steinman were part of the soundtrack: "Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young" and "Nowhere Fast", both performed by Fire Inc., with Holly Sherwood providing lead vocals on the former and Laurie Sargent on the latter. Tom then goes to a local tavern, the Blackhawk, where he meets a tomboyish mechanic and ex-soldier named McCoy and lets her stay with him and Reva. [196] He practices ashtanga vinyasa yoga every day. As Tom storms out, Ellen follows and the two embrace in the rain. [19] In 1982, Dafoe starred as the leader of an outlaw motorcycle club in the drama The Loveless, his first role as a leading man. Movies. This cult favorite features a razor-sharp cast and original songs written by Jim Steinman, Stevie Nicks, Tom Petty and Ry Cooder and performed by The Blasters and The Fixx. Corrections? The group is joined by "Baby Doll", a fan of Ellen's, who warns them that the police are looking for the people who were behind the attack at Torchies. I remember, after the first screenings, people told me that I was going to be rich for life. There's this whole wave of insult comedy. Diane Lane was, I think, eighteen. Bigelow was dating David Giler, a collaborator and friend of Hill at the time. That night, Tom has a change of heart and agrees to talk to Ellen's manager and current boyfriend, Billy Fish, about rescuing her. [5] Hill was so impressed with her work on the film that he wrote additional scenes for her during the shoot. He played a tormented T.S. He told me he's going to do this new thing: he's going to put a female character right in the centre of the narrative."[7]. THE LIGHTHOUSE isn't the first time Dafoe has donned fisherman's wear. The concept for Streets of Fire came together during the making of 48 Hrs., and reunited director Walter Hill with producers Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver, and screenwriter Larry Gross, all of whom worked together on that production. He has five sisters and a brother. And Walter has it in his head to create a franchise about himintroducing him as The Stranger. So they didn't pull the trigger and Berg ended up selling it to Universal. On January 18, 2022, it was announced that Dafoe would host Saturday Night Live on January 29, 2022, with musical guest singer Katy Perry. It was painful. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. The Lantern's Brett Price wrote that Dafoe was "on another level" in No Way Home and not having his mask made him even more intimidating than he was in the 2002 film. [83] The murder mystery The Reckoning was Dafoe's final film of 2003, in which he starred with Paul Bettany. [120] Dafoe had a voice role in Wes Anderson's stop-motion animated film Fantastic Mr. Fox starring George Clooney as the titular Roald Dahl character. [4], Hill heard about Michael Par from the same agent who recommended Eddie Murphy to him for 48 Hrs (his then-girlfriend and later wife Hildy). Price, with reinforcements, is just about to arrest Raven, but is ambushed by an overwhelming amount of Bombers. [41] He was due to star opposite Joan Cusack in the comedy Arrive Alive in 1991, but the film was canceled during production. "[4], When the script was finished, they sent it to Paramount. "post 4 screen shots of your comfort movie Streets of Fire (1984) Avec Willem Dafoe jeune qui porte une salopette en cuir (oui)" [184], Upon release of No Way Home, Dafoe's reprisal was met with universal acclaim. Hill was reluctant to cast her because he felt that she was too young for the role. Dafoe played a paraplegic, wheelchair-using Vietnam veteran who befriends the film's subject Ron Kovic (played by Tom Cruise), another paraplegic veteran. [103] In the same year, Dafoe voiced the main villain, an evil wizard, in the English dub of the Japanese animated fantasy film Tales from Earthsea,[104] had a supporting role as a US Senator in the drama The Walker, his fourth collaboration with Paul Schrader,[105] and took on the lead role in the psychological thriller Anamorph, in which Dafoe played a detective who notices the case he is investigating bears similarities to a previous case of his. "Willem and I have been quite friendly since Streets of Fire ," Hill told Forbes. The world is a high school, essentially. [80], Later in 2002, Dafoe starred with Greg Kinnear in Paul Schrader's biographical film Auto Focus, Dafoe's third collaboration with Schrader. [29][30] His second release of 1988 was Martin Scorsese's epic drama The Last Temptation of Christ, in which Dafoe portrayed Jesus. He's like a cowboy. Dafoe voiced Gill, a moorish idol fish who helps Nemo, a clownfish, in his struggle to return home to the ocean. [14], E.G. Reply . [31] Dafoe's performance in the film was widely praised, however, with Janet Maslin opining that Dafoe brought a "gleaming intensity" to the role. However, by this stage Gross and Hill had worked together so closely Gross says "I began to develop a strong sense for knowing how to sound like he did. [54] In the period drama Victorywhich was filmed in 1994 and premiered in Europe in 1996, but was not released until 1998Dafoe played a European living on an island in the Southeast Asia who becomes the target of redemption after preventing a woman, played by Irne Jacob, from being raped. [172] In the same year, he played a lighthouse keeper on a storm-swept island in Robert Eggers' psychological horror The Lighthouse opposite Robert Pattinson. It follows X (Dafoe) and Fox (Walken), a pair of corporate raiders attempting to lure a Japanese scientist from one megacorporation to another. [79] Steven Scaife at Vice wrote that Dafoe's Goblin "represents everything thats fun about superhero villains, as well as everything thats great about Raimi's campy films", also commending Dafoe's voice and body language, which helped overcome the bulky Green Goblin costume that he compared to that of a Power Rangers villain. [64] Later in the year, Dafoe starred in the action film The Boondock Saints. Gross and Hill met with the editors on the weekends and looked at footage. [167] Also that year, he co-starred as Gerhard Hardman in a film adaptation of Agatha Christie's detective novel Murder on the Orient Express, directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh;[168] and played Atlantean scientist Nuidis Vulko in a deleted role in Zack Snyder's Justice League. [155] Dafoe made his second guest appearance in the animated sitcom The Simpsons in November 2014, voicing a new school teacher who bullies Bart Simpson profusely. What happened was that all of the people that made Streets of Fire left Universal Studios and went to 20th Century Fox. [130] Dafoe then starred in the Australian drama The Hunter, playing a professional hunter who travels to Tasmania to hunt down the world's only remaining thylacine. I think he was too much of gentlemen to tell me that I was too needy at the time. Willem was born William James Dafoe on July 22, 1955, in Appleton, Wisconsin, USA, to William Alfred Dafoe, doctor, and his wife Muriel Isabel. [43] In his next starring role, Paul Schrader's drama Light Sleeper, Dafoe played John LeTour, a lonely, insomniac, New Yorker working as a delivery man for a drug supplier, who is played by Susan Sarandon. [194], In March 2004, Dafoe met Italian actress Giada Colagrande in Rome at the premiere of one of her films. Dafoe was an early member of experimental theater company The Wooster Group, which he is credited as co-founding in the 1970s. Willem Dafoe was born in 1955, so he's no longer a young man. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). [132][133][134] Dafoe starred alongside Marina Abramovi and Gretchen Mol in the play The Life and Death of Marina Abramovi, which premiered at The Lowry in 2011. The group, along with the Sorels, ditch the bus and take a train back to the Richmond. [4], Streets of Fire has a number of similarities to Capcom's hit 1989 beat 'em up video game Final Fight. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Streets of Fire - Collector's Edition 4K Ultra HD - amazon.com [40] In 1991, Dafoe starred with Danny Glover and Brad Johnson in the action film Flight of the Intruder. Par did not always work well with Walter Hill: I think Walter is a writer at heart. Willem Dafoe: The Essential Films & Performances [5][9][10], The film's title came from a song written and recorded by Bruce Springsteen on his 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town. It went $14 million over budget, I think and I kept saying to Joel, how are they allowing this? Willem Dafoe: An Underrated Great of his Generation - Flickering Myth