167 Quotes by Willem Dafoe

It’s no fun for an actor to keep repeating what you did before. It’s always changing. I’m changing. The target keeps moving. That’s the beauty of it.

I was doing community theater, and I was always interested in acting, but I was also interested in sports. I was interested in a lot of things. I was a pretty normal guy. I wasn’t like a guy who grew up in a dark theater watching movies.

I was born William. My father was William. I came from a big family, I hated being called Billy. Willem’s a nickname; it’s a Dutch name, very common in the Netherlands.

You can be intuitive when you’ve got a more expansive role. You can get into the poetry of telling the story rather than just pushing buttons.

I wish to Christ I could make up a really great lie. Sometimes, after an interview, I say to myself, ‘Man, you were so honest – can’t you have some fun? Can’t you do some really down and dirty lying?’ But the puritan in me thinks that if I tell a lie, I’ll be punished.

Sometimes I think women are lucky because they can develop in ways men can’t. The old-boy network may be oppressive to women, but it actually stunts men in terms of personal growth.

Trust is always a factor. You’ve just got to look at the big picture, and you’ve got to look at the small picture – the small picture in the sense that you’ve got to make every scene work and you’ve got to deal with what people are presenting you with, too.

I don’t think people want to see me as a regular guy; besides, I’m a regular guy in real life. I guess I just want to be reckless in my work.

Sometimes you make very interesting movies that aren’t meant for everybody. But this is a capitalist society, so everything conspires to put value on whether it sells or not.