167 Quotes by Willem Dafoe

One of the pleasures of going to the movies for me is quite simply to see new ways, to think about broader ways or to challenge something as a given. It's usually people from outside, from the margins, that have the voice that inspires me.

The aesthetic is not that we're taking a hand-held camera and we're just letting it roll and doing our thing, ... Before It Had a Name.

his approach to filmmakers and serving his stories.

I want to work with people who are good at what they do, and people who are passionate.

The truth is I like the crazy ones better than the well-behaved ones normally because they tend to be the passionate ones. They never come after you if you're holding up your end. The only thing that's bad about an abusive director is that they bully the people they can.

Mounting those red stairs [in Cannes] is something I've done with a very different intention many times. So it's interesting any time you witness those shifts of perspective. The beach scenes were also fun. It felt very strange and very theatrical to kind of commandeer it and have La Mer booming over the speakers.

I'm never in Hollywood! I'm a theatre actor that lives in New York. I'm very seldom in Los Angeles. I don't dislike LA, I just don't think it's a very healthy place for me to be all the time. When I'm shooting a movie there and am working I'm perfectly happy. But when I'm not working or engaged in something it's a place that I wouldn't live.

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.

Usually when you meet with a director, just meeting them after you've seen something you're interested in, they say, "Oh I'd love to work together," and sometimes you never hear from them again.