In 2017 he notably appeared in Murder on the Orient Express and The Florida Project, about a single mother and her young daughter. Raven Shaddock is the main antagonist in the 1984 action-drama film Streets of Fire. [151] Dafoe once again collaborated with Ferrara on the drama Pasolini, in which he played Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini during his last days before his murder in 1975. Nowhe neglected to mention that some fairy tales are very violent. We felt that we had compensated adequately in making a fun, exciting, stylized world. 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. Willem Dafoe was born in 1955, so he's no longer a young man. Suits me. The film was excoriated by a Variety reviewer as a "wannabe haunted house tale laced with silly sex scenes" and an "embarrassment". They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Diane Lane was, I think, eighteen. That night, Tom has a change of heart and agrees to talk to Ellen's manager and current boyfriend, Billy Fish, about rescuing her. Although the film was largely dismissed by critics,[62] critic David Stratton found there to be "compensation" in the performances. Actually Willem Dafoe. [33] As with The Last Temptation of Christ, the film was the subject of controversy, this time among African-American activists who criticized its fictionalization of events. The exterior of the Richmond Theater where Ellen Aim sings at the beginning of the film was shot on the backlot, with the interior done in the Wiltern Theater in L.A. for two weeks. [40] In 1991, Dafoe starred with Danny Glover and Brad Johnson in the action film Flight of the Intruder. The film takes place during the Middle Ages and saw Dafoe play the leader of acting troupe that recreate the events surrounding a woman accused of witchcraft and murder, who they believe is innocent. "post 4 screen shots of your comfort movie Streets of Fire (1984) Avec Willem Dafoe jeune qui porte une salopette en cuir (oui)" They did so the following afternoon at a small ceremony with two friends as witnesses. [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. He had his first leading role in the outlaw biker film The Loveless (1982) and then played supporting roles in Streets of Fire (1984) and To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), before his breakthrough roles in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and Mississippi Burning (1988). . [118][119] Dafoe played a former vampire who has a cure that can save the human species in the science fiction horror film Daybreakers, which starred Ethan Hawke as a vampire hematologist. He is of mixed ancestry. married to Giada Colagrande (2005present), This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Willem-Dafoe, Turner Classic Movies - Biography of Willem Dafoe. 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. Gross would do a draft and Hill would rewrite it. Always dark. Gross later said he thought Dafoe "may have been the best thing about the film. In 1977 he moved to New York City and joined the Performance Group. It's such a hard-shelled picture that it barely has moods. Due to the choreography and setups in between takes of every scene, the climactic four-minute showdown between Cody and Raven took a considerable time to shoot. [20], Following a "blink-and-you-miss-it" cameo in The Hunger (1983), Dafoe again played the leader of a biker gang in Walter Hill's 1984 action film Streets of Fire. So they didn't pull the trigger and Berg ended up selling it to Universal. Raven confronts Tom and warns him that he will be coming for Ellen and for him, too. Larry Gross recalls the filmmakers were optimistic prior to release: We all knew in our hearts that Michael was disappointing. Because I wanted to be on that stage singing with those guysBut back then I always played those quirky characters. Maybe if we'd had Tom Cruise, we might have had a success. Streets of Fire is a 1984 American neo-noir rock musical film directed by Walter Hill and co-written by Hill and Larry Gross. Peter Keough of Boston Globe said Dafoe "may be the best actor around for expressing an inner life in extremis."[171]. Directed by John Millius, the film received negative reviews. [55] In 1997, Dafoe returned to playing a villainous role in the action thriller Speed 2: Cruise Control, expressing the necessity of appearing in both independent and blockbuster films. He is the recipient of various . In 2020, The New York Times ranked him No. We're gonna have to re-build the Wiltern Theater, which they had taken down, it was a million dollars to re-do the ending and I felt all his hostility for Universal. Shooting wrapped on August 18, 1983. [111] In his final release of 2008, Dafoe starred in the Greek drama The Dust of Time as an American film director of Greek descent making a film his mother's (played by Irne Jacob) life. At the same time, I was myself knocked out by what Walter and (cinematographer) Andy Laszlo and our editor were doing visually on the film. In a way, I think Streets of Fire was about expanding The Warriors concept to a bigger stage. [126][127] and starred in his wife Giada Colagrande's film A Woman. Dafoe played John Clark, a CIA agent conducting a covert operation against a drug cartel in Colombia with Jack Ryan. I said, where'd you hear that? 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. [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. And I remember, in the park, Joel saying, 'Today Is What It Means to be Dead'. Dafoe co-starred as a man who kidnaps his former boss (played by Robert Redford) in exchange for a ransom. Reply . [141] The game polarized reviewers, although Dafoe and Page's performance were widely praised. [3] Originally, plans were made for the song to be featured on the film's soundtrack, to be sung by Ellen Aim at the end of the film, but when Springsteen was told that the song would be re-recorded by other vocalists, he withdrew permission for the song to be used. [23] After 10 days, it made $4.5 million, while fellow opener Star Trek III: The Search for Spock grossed $34.8 million in the same time. The Card Counter - September 10th, 2021 (Post-Production) Suffice it to say, Willem Dafoe is quite chummy with writer-director Paul Schrader. Tom meets Billy at the diner, and Billy agrees to pay him $10,000, but Tom also requires that Billy accompany him into the Battery to get Ellen, since he used to live there. I always thought of it as a musical. In 2021 he was featured in another Anderson film, The French Dispatch, playing a crooked accountant. 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. Price plans on arresting Raven, so he tells Tom to get out of town, so as to avoid any more violence. [112], Dafoe appeared in seven films in 2009, the first of which was in Lars von Trier's experimental film Antichrist. "[5], The character of Ellen Aim was written as a 28-year-old woman. He was surprised with her "total commitment to selling herself as a rock 'n' roll star". Nishitani said that, at the time, the team were not "aware of Streets of Fire, but I've Googled it and there does indeed seem to be something familiar about it" but that "this style of story was very popular back then" and many "fighting games made use of it" so "I guess we were part of that crowd! Dafoe was an early member of experimental theater company The Wooster Group, which he is credited as co-founding in the 1970s. He had to do something like that, especially after what he had done in Hard Times (1975). The fact that they made a deal with real gangs to be extras in the film. After studying at 'Appleton East High School,' he enrolled at the 'University of Wisconsin' in Milwaukee to study drama when he was 17. [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. [23], Dafoe's sole film release of 1986 was Oliver Stone's Vietnam War film Platoon, gaining him his widest exposure up to that point for playing the compassionate Sergeant Elias Grodin. [138] Later in 2012, Dafoe co-starred in the low-budget crime thriller Tomorrow You're Gone with Stephen Dorff and Michelle Monaghan. While there are thus two versions of the song, only Hartman's version was released commercially. [144] Also in 2013, Dafoe played the devil in a Mercedes-Benz Super Bowl commercial[145] and starred in three short student films as part of a competition sponsored by Jameson Irish Whiskey. In the real world, if someone insults you a couple of times, you can smack them. Dafoe portrayed John Henry Carpenter, an electronics expert who develops a strange friendship with the actor Bob Crane, leading Crane into a downward spiral. [39] In the same year, Dafoe co-starred in David Lynch's crime film Wild at Heart with Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern. We were in the universe of the teenage movie. 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. He then narrated Australian documentarian Jennifer Peedom's documentary Mountain. One was the decision on Universal's part, a crazy decision, to shoot the movie almost entirely in the studio under a tarpaulin. What happened was that all of the people that made Streets of Fire left Universal Studios and went to 20th Century Fox. So I went to Jimmy Iovine and I said all that to his, yeah it's true, I know. "[5][9] Hill liked the idea and cast her. Always night, just about. Music had been important in my films, it was usually post production. 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 [185] Peter Travers of Good Morning America and Jade King at The Gamer praised Dafoe and Molina, with King asserting that the two "stole the show as Green Goblin and Doc Ock" and described the depictions as brilliant. [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. [71] Dafoe received numerous awards and nominations for his performance, including his second Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination. [117] Dafoe next had a small role in the French thriller Farewell as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and co-starred opposite Michael Shannon in Werner Herzog's My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?, in which he played a detective attempting to figure out why a troubled man killed his own mother. 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. [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. "[4], Gross and Hill would work out their ideas in detail. ", Dafoe on his avoidance of being typecast as a villain, 1998[52], In his first of three film appearances in 1996, Dafoe made a cameo appearance as an electrician in the biographical drama Basquiat. [3] Par estimated it as four weeks: Willem and I shot that for two weeks, and then Walter shot it for another two week with the stunt guys. Willem Dafoe. [53] Next, he played a Canadian Intelligence Corps operative in the romantic war drama The English Patient, which starred Ralph Fiennes as desert explorer Count Lszl Almsy. [5] Hill was so impressed with her work on the film that he wrote additional scenes for her during the shoot. [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". Hill met Lane in New York City and she auditioned for him in black leather pants, a black mesh top and high-heeled boots. [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. "Walter really liked the idea because it had Tom Cody winning at all costs." [165][166] In 2017, Dafoe also played and voiced the character of Ryuk, a demonic death god from Japanese mythology, in Netflix's Death Note, and adaptation of the Japanese supernatural-thriller manga of the same name. [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. The story took place in Chicago, so they built Chicago in LA.[19]. I remember, after the first screenings, people told me that I was going to be rich for life. [140] Using motion-capture acting technology, Dafoe co-starred alongside Elliot Page in David Cage's video game Beyond: Two Souls (2013) as a paranormal activity researcher who acts as the surrogate-father-figure to a girl who possesses supernatural powers. It's about excitement, it's about thrills. [99] He starred with Juliette Binoche in a short film directed by Nobuhiro Suwa as part of the 2006 anthology film Paris, je t'aime. Dafoe plays John LeTour, the film's hero who is a 40-year-old high-class drug dealer (and a reformed addict) who searches aimlessly for purpose. [96] His fourth and final film appearance of 2005 was the crime thriller Ripley Under Ground, in which he played a museum curator. He has five sisters and a brother. "[4], Production began on location in Chicago in April 1983, then moved to Los Angeles for 45 days, and finally two weeks at a soap factory in Wilmington, California, with additional filming taking place at Universal Studios.
