167 Quotes by Willem Dafoe

All the time, as an actor, you want to be asking what’s next and where things are going. If you’re not asking those questions, you’re not growing.

It’s fair to say that if you have a lot of experience, your power is greater. You have more of an opportunity to roll up your sleeves with younger directors.

I’m an optimist. I hope if a movie’s good that it will be a success, but as we know, that’s not always true, just because of popular taste, advertising, distribution patterns – there’s lots of reasons.

As you get older, you suffer fools less easily. That’s why there’s all those cranky character actors. I’m an exception. I’m a sweetheart.

Film is fragmented and gets into lots of other people’s hands. There are a lot of pleasures that theatre gives me. You get to perform uninterrupted.

Basically, when I hear the words ‘family drama,’ I run in the opposite direction.

That’s a frustration sometimes, that certain directors that I’d like to work with, they just aren’t doing stories that I’m sort of castable in. Not always, but sometimes I have that frustration.

Let’s hope I never end up on a deserted island, because I could never make a decision on which three CDs to take with me.

If you get stuck and it feels a little stiff, then you do have to mess it up to find it. But other times it’s really written and you just stick to your guns and do it as elegantly and as concentrated and as committed as you can.