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. Tom bids farewell to Ellen, promising that hell always be there for her if she needs him. The film was positively received by critics and Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times wrote that "Dafoe steals the picture with his comic timing". The film delves into fiction when, over the course of Nosferatu's production, the cast and crew come to discover that Schreck is actually a vampire himself. I've always wondered why Walter has never wanted to work with me again. [36] It was filmed on location at Auschwitz, the first major film to do so. Witnessing this is Reva Cody, who telegrams her brother Tom, an ex-soldier and Ellen's ex-boyfriend, asking him to come home. 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. Although the film was largely dismissed by critics,[62] critic David Stratton found there to be "compensation" in the performances. [146] In 2014, Dafoe portrayed a wealthy private banker with connections to the Russia mafia opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman in Anton Corbijn's espionage thriller A Most Wanted Man. It's really bad. It's not Chicago. He is of mixed ancestry. [40] Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman felt the role proved Dafoe as a "master of leering, fish-faced villainy". 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. "[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. Action Crime Drama A mercenary is hired to rescue his ex-girlfriend, a singer who has been kidnapped by a motorcycle gang. [178], In February 2021, it was announced that Dafoe will be co-starring alongside Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo in Yorgos Lanthimos's Poor Things. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. Elias Grodin in Oliver Stones Platoon (1986), which earned Dafoe his first Academy Award nomination. I'm a director!" [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. The movie screened very, very well. There's gotta be a next project, and they're sitting there and there's so many lessons I learned during that movie. [141] The game polarized reviewers, although Dafoe and Page's performance were widely praised. [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 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. Streets of Fire (1984) Willem Dafoe: Raven Showing all 18 items Jump to: Photos (13) Quotes (5) Photos Quotes Raven : *I'm* lucky? 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. Willem Dafoe. . [40] He wore fake, corroded teeth and grew a pencil moustache that bore resemblance to his previous collaborator, John Waters. And I thought that we had done what we set out to do. In 2017 he notably appeared in Murder on the Orient Express and The Florida Project, about a single mother and her young daughter. "Willem and I have been quite friendly since Streets of Fire ," Hill told Forbes. We would stage it and shoot it. 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". The character's name is Tom Cody. [4], Walter Hill thought "the audience will go with you when you set up an abstract world with teenage values and play out a drama within this. We felt that we had compensated adequately in making a fun, exciting, stylized world. [46] In his review of the film, Vincent Canby felt that Dafoe lacked sensuality in the role. That whole scene was a Walter thing. This was tough stuff to shoot. [162] Also in 2016, Dafoe appeared in another Super Bowl commercial, this time for Snickers, recreating Marilyn Monroe's iconic white dress scene from the film The Seven Year Itch. Dafoe played John Clark, a CIA agent conducting a covert operation against a drug cartel in Colombia with Jack Ryan. And I felt, as I watched the post-production process going on, I just saw the film getting better and better. "[4], Among the actors they saw for the role of Tom Cody were Eric Roberts, Tom Cruise and Patrick Swayze. Streets of Fire (1984) 28: Bobby Hicks : The Florida Project (2017) 62: Hateful Guard at Maryland Training School for Boys : Cry-Baby (1990) 34: [13] For Hill, Par "had the right quality. He has frequently collaborated with filmmakers Paul Schrader, Abel Ferrara, Lars von Trier, Julian Schnabel, Wes Anderson, and Robert Eggers. [14], However, the film's failure at the box office put an end to the project. Jimmy Iovine produced five of the songs for the film and the soundtrack album. Tom and Raven duel using sledgehammers and their fists, with Tom ultimately being victorious. "[44][45], Dafoe next starred in the erotic thriller Body of Evidence (1993) with Madonna. [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. However, this was changed to a fair fight in order to get a PG rating.[14]. [138] Later in 2012, Dafoe co-starred in the low-budget crime thriller Tomorrow You're Gone with Stephen Dorff and Michelle Monaghan. A guy named Sean Daniels, who was head of production, one day said to me, well there is hostility because we understand you waited about eight months to come up with that final song and you never did it. [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". 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!' [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. Tom sends Ellen off with McCoy and Billy in the convertible, telling them to meet him at the Grant Street underpass and blows up the gas pumps outside a bar. [5] All 10 days of filming in Chicago were exteriors at night, on locations that included platforms of elevated subway lines and the depths of Lower Wacker Drive. 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. It's not New York. [23], "I was shattered when the film didn't perform", said Gross. [32], In his final release of 1988, Dafoe starred opposite Gene Hackman in the crime thriller Mississippi Burning as a pair of FBI agents investigating the disappearance of three civil rights workers in fictional Jessup County, Mississippi during the civil rights movement. [126][127] and starred in his wife Giada Colagrande's film A Woman. [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. 18 in its list of the 25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century. I said, how, and they, you've gotta understand, they built all, Walter Hill didn't want to go to Chicago. Dafoe played a cold, domineering English professor who has a strained relationship with his family. Gross says that Jeff Berg (Walter's agent), Larry Gordon and Michael Eisner, head of production at Paramount, "got into some kind of a fight when the script was finished. The Card Counter - September 10th, 2021 (Post-Production) Suffice it to say, Willem Dafoe is quite chummy with writer-director Paul Schrader. Dafoes other credits that year included Guillermo del Toros film noir Nightmare Alley and The Card Counter, a crime drama directed by Paul Schrader. I didn't get those fancy leads. ", "Light Sleeper Movie Review & Film Summary (1992)", "Did She Use Her Body As a Murder Weapon? stunt double Willem Dafoe (uncredited) / stunts (uncredited) Allan Graf . I always said whenever someone says fantasy they immediately think of more Disney-esque. Bigelow was dating David Giler, a collaborator and friend of Hill at the time. In 1977 he moved to New York City and joined the Performance Group. It was kind of real but it wasn't really. He's like John Ford. The bus is eventually stopped by a police blockade. Dafoe co-starred in the film as the father of Bryce Dallas Howard's character, a woman who discovers a plantation still thriving as if slavery had never been abolished. In 2020, The New York Times ranked him No. [12] He then apprenticed under Richard Schechner, the director of the avant-garde theater troupe The Performance Group, where he met and became romantically involved with director Elizabeth LeCompte. [159] He next played the boss of Gerard Butler's character in the drama A Family Man and starred in Loris Graud's arthouse science fiction film Sculpt, which was only screened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for one person at a time. As the biker gang leader Raven Shaddock in STREETS OF FIRE, costume designer Marilyn Vance put him in black patent leather fisherman's waders. He played a tormented T.S. I guess maybe I am. [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. [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. Larry [Gordon] and Joel [Silver] would be along on this ride. Maybe if we'd had Tom Cruise, we might have had a success. Much of the film's critical praise went to Dafoe; Roger Ebert wrote that Dafoe "embodies the Schreck of Nosferatu so uncannily that when real scenes from the silent classic are slipped into the frame, we don't notice a difference". The two didn't work together again for nearly four decades, when Hill wrote a part for Dafoe in his 2022 western Dead for a Dollar, in which he plays opposite Christoph Waltz. Joined by Ellen's manager, Billy Fish (Rick Moranis, Ghostbusters), the trio plunges headfirst into a world of rain-splattered streets, hot cars, and deadly assassins. We learned later that, I believe, Eisner rejected it on the grounds that it was too similar to Indiana Jones. [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. [95] Along with his wife Giada Colagrande, Dafoe co-wrote and starred in Before It Had a Name (2005), which Colagrande directed. Writers aren't always that good at communicating in person. This tarp measured 1,240 feet long by 220 feet wide over both sets, and cost $1.2 million to construct. During an interview, he said that half of his family puts the emphasis on the first syllable of the surname while the other half emphasizes the second syllable. Steinman later recalled thinking the script was 'terrible', but he thought the film was going to be a big hit, in part because of the enthusiasm of Joel Silver: [He said] this movie is about visuals. I think he was too much of gentlemen to tell me that I was too needy at the time. 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. The film received mixed reviews, although Peter Travers felt that he added a note of "vulnerability to the menace he has made his stock in trade". I already had a great respect for people like Minnelli. Streets of Fire 1984 Willem Dafoe ROCK & ROLL FABLE BIKER GANGS Fights RoughCut RetroSpect 830 subscribers Subscribe 129 Share 17K views 5 years ago This film is one of the greatest Rock movies. The first to be released, White Sands, saw Dafoe a play small-town sheriff who impersonates a dead man after finding his dead body and a suitcase containing $500,000 to solve the case, resulting in an FBI investigation. [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. [4], Streets of Fire fared poorly at the box office, opening in 1,150 theaters on June 1, 1984, and grossing $2.4 million during its first weekend. Streets of Fire is a 1984 American neo-noir rock musical film directed by Walter Hill and co-written by Hill and Larry Gross. Dafoe played the caretaker of a house that is inherited by the lover of its deceased owner, engaging in a sexual relationship with her. [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. He has five sisters and a brother. Or punch them. [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. [191] They split their time between Rome, Los Angeles, and New York City. It was so frustrating for me. The choreography for the two songs Ellen Aim sings and the one by the Sorels was done by Jeffrey Hornaday. The Hollywood they make movies about." The world is a high school, essentially. [14], You gotta realize that, out of the whole cast, nobody was over thirty. Later, at a concert, the Sorels open for Ellen and her band. [191][195] Dafoe acquired Italian citizenship through the marriage. [41] He was due to star opposite Joan Cusack in the comedy Arrive Alive in 1991, but the film was canceled during production. To escape, the group hijacks the tour bus of a doo-wop group called the Sorels. Critic Stephen Holden wrote in his review of the film, "Even in the "toughest, most macho roles [Dafoe] retains a tinge of Christ-like sweetness and vulnerability". The English Patient was filmed in Tuscany, where Dafoe said he particularly enjoyed the "quiet moments in the monastery between shoots". [3] The studio claimed that they replaced Springsteen's song because it was a "downer". Dafoes subsequent roles included a mercenary in pursuit of a Tasmanian tiger in the Australian thriller The Hunter (2011) and an animated Martian warrior, portrayed through the motion-capture technique, in the sci-fi adventure John Carter (2012). The film and his performance received enormous critical acclaim, with The Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday writing that "Dafoe delivers his finest performance in recent memory, bringing to levelheaded, unsanctimonious life a character who offers a glimmer of hope and caring within a world markedly short on both". [4], Gross says Hill did not want the film to be especially violent there would be no blood and no one would die. In Richmond, a city district in a time period that resembles the 1950s (labelled "another time, another place"), Ellen Aim, lead singer of Ellen Aim and the Attackers, has returned home for a concert. And I was like, "Ohthis is not going to go well." In addition, 12 1950 and 1951 model Studebakers were used as police cars. [60] Following a villainous supporting role in the romantic mystery drama Lulu on the Bridge,[61] Dafoe starred alongside Christopher Walken and Asia Argento in Abel Ferrara's cyberpunk drama New Rose Hotel in 1998. It is described in the opening credits and posters as "A Rock & Roll Fable" [2] and is a mix of various movie genres with elements of retro-1950s woven into then-current 1980s themes. [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. It could still be tough and strong and have a woman do it without rewriting the part. Box office figures for Walter Hill films in France, "Tonight is What Means To Be Young: "Streets of Fire" at 30", "How Did This Get Made: A Conversation with 'Streets of Fire' Co-Writer Larry Gross", "Tom Cody, Pleased To Meet Ya! [72], Dafoe took on two leading roles in 2001, both of which were as priests. The Bombers, a biker gang from another part of town called the Battery, led by Raven Shaddock, crash the concert and kidnap Ellen. Richard Corliss of Time magazine wrote that Dafoe "triumphs over some awful dialogue by giving the role his nutsy-greatsy weirdness". 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. [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. [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. Nowhe neglected to mention that some fairy tales are very violent. [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. [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. Actor Age Check - How old was Willem Dafoe in Streets of Fire? Willem Dafoe in STREETS OF FIRE. It's funny. In high school, he acquired the nickname Willem,[11] the Dutch version of the name William. [15], Par said that the original draft of the script had Tom Cody kill Raven with a knife. [5], While shooting in Chicago, the production was plagued by inclement weather that included rain, hail, snow, and a combination of all three. Tom Cody : I think you're forgettin' somethin'. Movies. His character was described as a "diminutive version of Dick Cheney, with wire-rimmed glasses and a fringe of white hair" by The Times writer Caryn James. [94], With the avant-garde drama Manderlay in 2005, Dafoe began another actor-director collaboration, this time with Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier. [38], Dafoe made a cameo appearance in John Waters' musical comedy Cry-Baby (1990) as a prison guard who gives a brief lecture on values to the title character, who is played by Johnny Depp. The film was co-directed by Kathryn Bigelow and Monty Montgomery and paid homage to 1953 film The Wild One, starring Marlon Brando in a similar role. 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. Actually Willem Dafoe. "He'd say it would be inappropriate to direct this movie if there were any blood", said Gross. [5] Hill was so impressed with her work on the film that he wrote additional scenes for her during the shoot. He was portrayed by Willem Dafoe, who also played Eric Masters in To Live and Die in L.A., Bobby Peru in Wild at Heart, John Geiger in Speed 2: Cruise Control, Max Schreck in Shadow of the Vampire, the Green Goblin in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy and Spider-Man: No Way Home, Armando Barillo in Once Upon a . Dafoe played a criminal who engages in a robbery with Cage's character before demonstrating his dark side. [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. [5], "We were very excited about Diane Lane because she was starring in two excitedly hyped Francis Ford Coppola pictures that were being done in Oklahoma", says Gross. He had his first leading role in the outlaw biker film The Loveless (1982) and then played the main antagonist in Streets of Fire (1984) and To Live and Die in L.A. (1985). [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. 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. [96] His fourth and final film appearance of 2005 was the crime thriller Ripley Under Ground, in which he played a museum curator. 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. And we didn't fullyI want to say we had too much integrity. 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. [5] The factory scenes that take place in the Battery were filmed at a rotting soap factory in Wilmington, California, for ten nights. The film was met with a mixed reception from critics, although Caryn James of The New York Times felt that Dafoe's "stunningly sharp, sympathetic portrait raises the film above a script that is full of serious holes and stilted dialogue". [107] Dafoe starred with Ryan Reynolds, Julia Roberts, and Emily Watson in the drama Fireflies in the Garden, which premiered at Berlinale in 2008 but was not released theatrically until 2011. Didn't know how to shoot music. William Dafoe in Streets of Fire (1984) This thread is archived . No director holds a candle to Hill for sheer visceral expertise. It had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, where the film and Dafoe's performance received high praise.