{"id":585275,"date":"2026-08-06T19:56:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T19:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/585275\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T19:56:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T19:56:14","slug":"willem-dafoe-interview-late-fame-lars-von-trier-and-werwulf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/585275\/","title":{"rendered":"Willem Dafoe Interview: ‘Late Fame,’ Lars von Trier, and ‘Werwulf’"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know you\u2019re in sure, steady hands when Willem Dafoe<\/a> enters the frame. The four-time Oscar-nominated actor brings a serene gravitas to any role \u2014 whether as a painfully human Jesus in \u201cThe Last Temptation of Christ,\u201d a grizzled lighthouse keeper going insane in \u201cThe Lighthouse,\u201d or even as the green-screen-ensconced Green Goblin in a suite of \u201cSpider-Man\u201d movies. Or, of course, as a therapist appallingly violating the patient-doctor relationship in Lars von Trier\u2019s \u201cAntichrist.\u201d<\/p>\n

His latest film, \u201cLate Fame,\u201d<\/a> is one of six the unimpeachably beloved actor has in theaters this year, including the Greek bacchanal \u201cThe Birthday Party,\u201d Robert Eggers\u2019 \u201cWerwulf,\u201d and the mountaineer drama \u201cTenzing.\u201d His hard-shelled, but not compassionless, portrayal as erstwhile post-Beatnik-era writer Ed Saxberger in Kent Jones\u2019 \u201cLate Fame<\/a>\u201d is one of the actor\u2019s best in a career built on bests. <\/p>\n

\"South<\/a> \"Vintage<\/a> <\/p>\n

While Dafoe is not an actor who dissolves body and soul into a role \u2014 and that\u2019s by design, we are assured to know it\u2019s his presence onscreen \u2014 the border between character and actor hasn\u2019t been quite so blurry in years here. And he\u2019s anchored by the sharp wit and Manhattan scene-setting of Samy Burch\u2019s script (itself an adaptation of a posthumous novella by Arthur Schnitzler, the author of the book that became \u201cEyes Wide Shut\u201d).<\/p>\n

A one-hit wonder New York poet of the 1970s, Ed has put that part of himself in storage, now working as a mail clerk and content to shoot pool with his blue-collar buddies after punching out. But he\u2019s drawn back into his early work when courted by a circle of aspiring writers, dilettantes, and charlatans who call themselves the Enthusiasm Society, led by the trust-funded, self-styled Soho patron-of-the-arts Meyers (Edmund Donovan). Ed is also attracted to a wounded Holly Golightly-type played by Greta Lee, an Enthusiasm Society stage performer who relies on the company of men and their largesse to pay the rent on her lower Manhattan walk-up. There\u2019s a brilliant, hurting scene where she looks at him, post-embrace, and realizes how old he is.<\/p>\n

At 71, Dafoe, who splits his time between New York and Rome, still feels \u201clike a kid,\u201d he told IndieWire, but his perfectly unfussy and relaxed turn in \u201cLate Fame\u201d indicates someone who\u2019s known what it means to be the oldest person in the room, too.<\/p>\n

Ask his co-star Donovan, 35, who\u2019s spent a young career and long before his screen partner\u2019s work. Especially the experimental Wooster theater group<\/a> Dafoe founded in 1975, which stripped apart classic texts in the modern age with raw, physical performances. \u201cIt\u2019s sort of the idea of American avant-garde theater, downtown theater,\u201d Donovan told IndieWire, that defined the bold artistic milieu of New York around the same time Saxberger would\u2019ve been writing poems.<\/p>\n

\"LATE\u2018Late Fame\u2019\u00a9Magnolia Pictures\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s so about the work. I don\u2019t get the sense, looking back at all the many, many things that he\u2019s done, that he\u2019s like, \u2018Oh no, that\u2019s not a big enough part. I can\u2019t do that.\u2019 Because I don\u2019t even think that some of these smaller roles were necessarily when he was at the beginning of his career. I think some of them were just things that he knew the filmmaker and he wanted to be a part of this thing,\u201d said Donovan, whose earliest introduction to Dafoe was as the Green Goblin.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s very relaxed. He has a sort of open-minded but easeful way about him. He\u2019s a livewire too, though. And I don\u2019t think you see that in the movie,\u201d Donovan said. \u201cThat\u2019s a part of his daily personhood on set. I mean, he\u2019ll just start improvising songs and singing. He\u2019s very physical. He\u2019ll sort of dance in a moment on his own, without having been inspired to do it by anything or anyone. He\u2019s a truly free person.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donovan also said Dafoe treated him like a peer, not a prot\u00e9g\u00e9. \u201cI mean this in such a positive way: He\u2019s very unsentimental. There was never a sense that he was like, \u2018You know what, kid? You\u2019re going to be alright,’\u201d he said. \u201cIf anything, he was more inquisitive and like, \u2018What\u2019s your experience been like with this or that? Or what do you want to do?’\u201d<\/p>\n

That same sense of searching, as revealed in IndieWire\u2019s wide-ranging conversation with Dafoe, is still part of his career philosophy (and even anxieties) nowadays regardless of age or experience. Below, we dig into \u201cLate Fame,\u201d \u201cThe Birthday Party,\u201d his philosophies about acting, and his latest communications with Lars von Trier, who not only directed Dafoe in \u201cAntichrist\u201d but also \u201cNymphomaniac\u201d and \u201cThe Kingdom\u201d Season 3. Von Trier, though, has recently fallen on poor health due to Parkinson\u2019s<\/a>, but they\u2019ve stayed in close touch.<\/p>\n

The following interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.<\/p>\n

IndieWire: Tell me about how \u201cLate Fame\u201d got started: You were sitting next to Kent Jones on a plane, and it turns out you\u2019d both been chasing the same project.<\/p>\n

Willem Dafoe: I had seen the movie \u201cDiane.\u201d I knew Kent mostly from New York Film<\/a> Festival and somewhat followed the things that he had done with Martin Scorsese. We weren\u2019t close friends, but I\u2019d seen him through the years, so we did know each other. I was trying to find something to do with Abel Ferrara, and I put out the feeler to a friend of mine, and he said, \u201cI just read this Schnitzler novella. It\u2019s really interesting. Here it is. Check it out.\u201d I read it. I thought, \u201cThis is really great.\u201d I thought, \u201cThis isn\u2019t for Abel, but it\u2019s great. This is a movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

So I was carrying it around, and then I ran into Kent, and we sat next to each other on a plane from L.A. to New York. We talked about everything under the sun, caught up. Little did we know that we each had a copy of \u201cLate Fame\u201d in our bag because he had just signed on to direct it, and I didn\u2019t even know that. I was looking to find out who had the rights to \u201cLate Fame.\u201d Then I get back to New York, and after a couple of days, I get a call, and I hear Kent Jones is directing this thing called \u201cLate Fame,\u201d and he wants you to play this character. I thought, \u201cOh my God, you\u2019re kidding me.\u201d It was just one of those things.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth mentioning, I think \u2014 maybe I shouldn\u2019t, but I can\u2019t resist \u2014 that when I first heard it was transposed to New York present day, because it seemed like the Vienna part of it was so important, I thought, ah, that takes something away. Then of course, I read Samy Birch\u2019s script, and then I thought, no, this is cool. This also touched on a lot of things that are in my head because I arrived basically at the same time that the character arrived in New York City. Now I\u2019m longer in the tooth, and I look back on that time. I think about it a lot, and people ask me about it a lot, particularly young people, because there\u2019s a romantic attraction and a nostalgia to that period in the mid-to-late \u201970s and early \u201980s when a lot was going on.<\/p>\n

\"'Late\u2018Late Fame\u2019Magnolia Pictures<\/p>\n

There is this emphasis lately on trying to \u201cdissolve\u201d into a role that can prove damaging for actors, and then that becomes a metric of success. But I don\u2019t get that from you, whether you\u2019re playing Pasolini or Jesus. Maybe that\u2019s a younger thing for actors.<\/p>\n

I want to disappear into a role, but not to lose myself. Change is happening all the time. Every time you approach something, and you\u2019re inviting yourself to change the way you\u2019re living or the way you see things or what you\u2019re doing, there\u2019s this thing called a frame, basically. You\u2019re entering that frame, and you\u2019ve got permission to fuck around with your life, to abandon your life and take on the way, the look, the preoccupations, et cetera, of another person. Sometimes, there can be some overlap, but it\u2019s not necessary. You want to go to those things to give you flexibility, so you don\u2019t get stuck in a way of being, in a way of seeing. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s what keeps us alive, if we don\u2019t have our identity harden and our view of the world get small. If you remain kind of turned on and engaged, then every sky that you see every morning when you wake up is a new sky, and you can be excited and turned on. That\u2019s the state I want to be in. I want to be turned on. I want to be eating up what\u2019s happening. That\u2019s what I look for. <\/p>\n

So, disappear? Because I don\u2019t know who that character is. I make myself available to do something. I look around, I see what the world is. I see what the director is trying to accomplish, and I try to use myself to make stuff function, make the world complete, make the world have its life. So if that\u2019s disappearing, I guess I like disappearing, but I never lose myself because I think I approach things physically, not psychologically. So I always know it\u2019s my body that\u2019s doing the thing.<\/p>\n

\"LATE\u2018Late Fame\u2019\u00a9Magnolia Pictures\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

Do you identify with Ed Saxberger? You haven\u2019t dipped in prolificness going back to \u201cHeaven\u2019s Gate,\u201d whereas this is someone where there\u2019s a huge creative gulf between his past and present. He still\u00a0thinks\u00a0in poetry, but that side of himself, professionally speaking, is now on a shelf.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s an apt description. Yeah, my life is not his life, but there\u2019s a line \u2014 I say it all the time in interviews<\/a> because I think it\u2019s interesting to describe where I\u2019m at right now in my life. It\u2019s like, I was the youngest person in every room, in every situation. It seems like forever, and then one day I woke up, and it wasn\u2019t gradual. One day I woke up, and I was the oldest person in the room, and something shifted, and people started treating me like someone. They started seducing me into telling stories, war stories, talking about movies, telling stories about my experience, this kind of thing. It becomes very seductive. That part I related to. Even if the story was, as you said, there\u2019s a huge gap, I realized being the guy that has this position thrust onto him that\u2019s half-flattery, half-admiration, half-hope. You start to get puffed up, and you start to accommodate them. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s just like being an actor, I suppose. You give them what they need because that makes you feel whole. I understand that these guys dupe him into going back and romanticizing and thinking about finding that contact that made him want to be a poet before, which obviously he\u2019s buried and has been at peace with. He doesn\u2019t seem like he\u2019s a miserable guy, but these guys and Greta\u2019s character, they start to seduce him into returning to a feeling that he\u2019s lost. So that feeling of being lost, I haven\u2019t lost it. I still feel like a kid. I love what I do. I still, thank God, have some opportunities, but I see around me sometimes some older people that lose it. So these are all things that are floating around. So it\u2019s very rich material for me because I can relate to it. It may not be my experience, but I think it expresses something that\u2019s not an idea, not a convention. It\u2019s something that really is happening even now.<\/p>\n

What about channeling your own experience with younger fans into Ed\u2019s relationship with the Enthusiasm Society? I\u2019m sure you\u2019re mostly recognized for things like Marvel by young people.<\/p>\n

My relationship to younger fans is heavy on the Marvel stuff because they\u2019re more widely seen. But also, as film sometimes seems to be dying, we have to look to the younger people, really. I have been working with younger people just because I\u2019m getting older. Everybody, that bears out what I was talking about before. The joke\u2019s on me because I don\u2019t feel it, but I got to admit it. But my relationship to younger people, because they\u2019re turned on, they\u2019re still interested. <\/p>\n

The worst thing is when people look back, and they think about better days, and they lament how it\u2019s not as good as it used to be. I suppose I could do that in some ways. I\u2019m not trying to be a sweetie and be an optimist totally, but I just don\u2019t feel that way. I feel like things happen in waves, and things are very different now, but I get turned on by the impulses of young people now. It\u2019s very different. They have different references. They live differently. They look at life differently, but I\u2019m a bit of a blood sucker. I like their energy, and I like to go towards it.<\/p>\n

\"LATEEdmund Donovan in \u2018Late Fame\u2019\u00a9Magnolia Pictures\/Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

Well, they\u2019re not jaded yet anyway.<\/p>\n

I guess that\u2019s it. You always look for people that are turned on, and they\u2019re making what we do special because they\u2019re elevating it. They\u2019re making it, I won\u2019t go as far to say sacred, but they\u2019re making it special. That\u2019s something that\u2019s getting harder and harder to find in everybody\u2019s life now.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve moved remarkably fluidly between movies that are most likely to be studio-backed, and then more intimate movies that are harder to get made. Is there a philosophy there?<\/p>\n

I still key off of directors, and I also key off of what comes to me. I don\u2019t have a production company. I do check things out. I do sniff around if I see a film of a director that I really adore. I\u2019m not opposed to reaching out to see if I can have a meeting. But generally, I go towards directors, and it kind of naturally happens, the big-small movie combination. I don\u2019t overthink it too much. I think also your choices, if you\u2019ve done a couple of big movies or a couple of genre movies, or you\u2019re doing three movies in a row where you\u2019ve got a big old beard, and you\u2019re in period costumes, you really want to do something different. You want to mix it up so you don\u2019t get stuck, so you don\u2019t paint yourself into a corner. <\/p>\n

But I\u2019m not so much aware of the size as I am the directors and the kind of roles. Because what\u2019s hard to understand for people sometimes is every role has a different function. Part of being in a movie is you\u2019ve got to figure out where you serve the movie, whether you\u2019re supposed to drive, whether you\u2019re supposed to be a little relief, whether you\u2019re supposed to be support. There\u2019s all these different modes. So you\u2019re dealing with all these considerations when you\u2019re choosing stuff. So for example, right now I\u2019ve got actually quite a few movies coming out. Two I would call big movies. Four are small movies, but all of them are by a loose definition \u201cauteur movies.\u201d So I think that kind of expresses my choices these days.<\/p>\n

With this other movie coming out, \u201cThe Birthday Party,\u201d you\u2019re this billionaire who is scheming diabolically to entrap your biographer by way of his daughter, and he\u2019s someone who has suffered a lot of loss, which is a hallmark of a lot of your roles. What attracted you to this one?<\/p>\n

I had done a movie called \u201cInside,\u201d with a Greek director named Vasilis Katsoupis. It was an interesting script, and I liked the director, but it was a little bit of a gamble because it was his first feature. He was great, and I enjoyed the experience. It\u2019s a film that\u2019s not for everyone, particularly if they need a clear narrative, but for people that don\u2019t, I think it\u2019s a really interesting movie. Part of that experience [on \u201cInside\u201d] was the producer, because he was really good at helping us take a script that was a very strong script, but when we went to shoot it, there had to be lots of adjustments. He was very strong and very helpful, really supported the director. He was a guy that I liked working with. He told me he had bought this novel [\u201cThe Birthday Party\u201d], and he described it to me, and I thought, \u201cOh, that\u2019s fantastic.\u201d But I didn\u2019t see myself in it because it was about Greek people and international rich people. I thought, \u201cWell, that\u2019s not me. I\u2019m not in there.\u201d <\/p>\n

Then, with time, he proposed a main role to me. Initially I thought, \u201cWell, I\u2019m not sure I\u2019m right for it.\u201d But I read it, and then he showed me the films of the director that he was proposing, that he was going to hire for this project. He was a director that I didn\u2019t know, but I liked his films very much. Then when I met him, I was sold. So it was really a situation of people and situations. Who the character was was a little scary because I\u2019m not sure I was right for it, but there was enough to work on and enough to go towards that I thought, \u201cYeah, I\u2019m going to roll the dice on this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"THE\u2018The Birthday Party\u2019Courtesy Everett Collection<\/p>\n

You are a recurring figure in the acting troupe of Wes Anderson and Robert Eggers. Anytime I talk to people about they\u2019re starting a Wes Anderson movie, they say being on a Wes Anderson set feels like you\u2019re in a Wes Anderson movie. Eggers similarly has a house style. For something like \u201cWerwulf,\u201d is it a similar experience?<\/p>\n

Yes. Because it\u2019s pretty full on. Stuff is not delegated. The world is complete. All of his collaborators are on board and they\u2019re all strong. [People] aren\u2019t running errands for him. You\u2019re there as material. I like that. When you\u2019re there as material and you really have something to do, this is the way I like to be.<\/p>\n

Have you been in touch with Lars von Trier?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been in touch with him since I last worked with him. The last thing I did was \u201cThe Kingdom.\u201d I think that\u2019s the last thing he did. I don\u2019t know whether I should hold back on this, but I keep in touch with him occasionally, and he\u2019d answer immediately. The last time I wrote to him, he has not answered. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s significant because of health problems he\u2019s dealing with. I think he\u2019s declared many times that he wants to make another film. <\/p>\n

I loved working with him. Not easy, of course, as you can imagine, but really inspiring and slippery, slippery. God knows slippery. But if you stay with him and you don\u2019t fall off the horse, it\u2019s really rewarding because I think he has a deep understanding of what\u2019s great about cinema. To answer your question, I don\u2019t know. But he\u2019s had some health problems. That\u2019s not big news. So I feel a little sad about it. Last time I wrote, I didn\u2019t hear back. What can I say?<\/p>\n

\u201cLate Fame\u201d opens in select theaters from Magnolia Pictures starting Friday, August 7. \u201cThe Birthday Party\u201d from Quiver opens on Friday, August 14. Another recent Dafoe film, \u201cThe Souffleur,\u201d is now streaming on Kino Film Collection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You know you\u2019re in sure, steady hands when Willem Dafoe enters the frame. The four-time Oscar-nominated actor brings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,93,1043,61,1694,60,107921,3430],"class_list":["post-585275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-ie","tag-interviews","tag-ireland","tag-late-fame","tag-willem-dafoe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}