Pedro Pascal interviews Willem Dafoe, and it's exactly what you expected.

i'm pedro pascal welcome to inside the actor's studio [Music] his face is unmistakable his performance is detailed and textured tonight's guest has been called one of the greatest american actors of the past 40 years he has appeared in more than 100 movies from hollywood blockbusters to art house films he says he has lived a nomadic life never wanting to be a star choosing instead to disappear into his roles a soldier in platoon the undead portraying a silent film star in shadow of the vampire a motel manager in the florida project and vincent van gogh in at eternity's gate all four performances earned him academy award nominations he's also been at the vanguard of experimental theater since the 1970s as a founding member of the wooster group one critic wrote of our guest if you turn off the sound in any of his movies and watch his face the movie works at least until the camera has to look at something or somebody else the actor's studio is honored to welcome willem dafoe hey pedro hi willem i just saw pedro last night on broadway in king lear he was great yeah tell them please can i just say thank you first and then that stops um it's an honor to do this so thank you i have to start with that and now where the hell did you find acting uh you know that listen it's a tribe you know and you look for your identity also there was a university lawrence university and in the summer time they'd have a community theater so i would hang out there and i did plays there as a kid and i really enjoyed them so it was social right that's where it starts around what age are we talking about here where you started to i remember uh you know when i was young i'd do plays and things it was always something i like to do but but as far as like having the public come and and having it be serious and having an actual run i'd say about 11 years old well i have a quote from a critic from your performance in a thousand clowns when you were 13. that's when i really got serious the quote is despite his age 13 bill at the time yes does more than memorize lines and recite them at the proper time he actually acts and reacts and works subtleties into the part this is a lad with a promising future on the stage you got a great review on your first show yeah good good so you end up studying uh drama at the university of wisconsin in milwaukee briefly and you dressed up yes it was an important time you know i was young i wanted to get going and i don't know i had ants in my pants um but even though i was only there for like three semesters it was very valuable and so then you go to new york i go to new york and there's a part of me that thinks i want to be an actor look what's in place is you know you do the things that actors do you know you try to get an agent and you knock on doors and all that but not because i was repulsed by that or anything but i found once i got here i was relating more to the work that was being done downtown at scrappy little spaces there was sort of a non-professional aesthetic and and it was a time when you know i remember so well dancers were making plays yeah actors were making music musicians were making movies there was a lot going on but it was all very personal very homemade and a part of me really loved that because it was passionate and it was connected to the to the people but there was also a part of me that didn't you know like the amateur aesthetic because i thought you know i grew up you know a striving midwesterner you know you're supposed to make good you know you're supposed to accomplish something right some of these people were very hang loose right and i learned a different approach from them that to this day i appreciate very much they were working not in a career-minded way but they were working because they had something to get off their chest or they had a personal fantasy to uh act out or they wanted to develop something in their own way but it wasn't career-minded right in the beginning all you want to do is work yeah no when i moved to new york at 18 i was like i'm going to go to new york i got to be in a woody allen movie you know what i mean and then you learn and you learn yeah yeah that's interesting because so many of us have an impression of um uh a man who in the 70s moved to new york and looking so specifically for something vanguard and something i fell into it i was subtracted to people yeah i'd go to these performances downtown and i'd see things that i had never seen before and was starting to think in different ways and there was no ambition there was really a desire to learn that's all i wanted to be around these people and that's what sent me down to the wooster group right so by being around these people you end up co-founding an experimental theater company called the wooster group it was at the vanguard of the off off broadway movement at the time i think the director liz lecompte used to always say we're a community theater and our community is these people down in soho right we did move shows we even moved showed to broadway once we moved shows off broadway but basically it was about making work in this tiny little factory space on worcester street this still exists this company still exists and they do very good work but i was one of the principal people for 27 years this is to quote you i was with the wooster group for 26 years because it's in that kind of physical theater that i find my pleasures in the poetry of things rather than interpreting things and i was just wondering if you could expand on on on that for us i'll try i mean there is a craft involved but you know it's not the traditional one that's tied to the theater that is dominated by language and psychology it's really about doing things and it was partly because you're making theater with people that aren't actors you're making theater with people that are painters architects poets musicians and they don't have a stake in having a certain approach they approach it from their perspective and i started to learn that the best way into performing for me the best way into inhabiting a character is finding that kind of engagement and that dedication to the actions you know it's not about learning accents or emotional recall or these other techniques that you learn so it was it's a deceptively simple but very hands-on and direct approach to performing having a lot to do with the quality of being there and receptivity so your very first job is michael chimino's heaven's gate yes and um you shot for three months and got fired what happened you know i was working um i was working at the theater uh i got a call they said they're looking for ethnic looking faces and because they wanted to create this chorus of immigrants it's a very interesting you know it's a new kind of western and it's about these people coming from all countries to come and uh you know make their way in the west so they say there's not really a scripted role but we want to have this chorus and we'll develop it when we're there and that sounds very cool and i remember um they they had me do a monologue in my language and then in the another language they didn't ask whether i spoke it fluently and i learned the speech phonetically from a friend of mine in dutch and i passed because in the casting department in the production nobody spoke dutch so i got this role to be determined and i was supposed to be there just for a couple of weeks you know because at the start of it it was supposed to be like a three-month shoot it ballooned into a eight-month shoot so when i got there they ripped up my contract and said you know that daily contract that we talked about no you're on something called a weekly and uh you're lucky we're going to keep you as long as we want you and i said yeah but i got the theater and they were like don't worry about that come on you're in this movie samina's just won the academy award you know come on kid wake up smell the coffee so i'm racked with guilt because i've hung up the theater they're very generous they start working around me i'm there for a long time and then things got very tense on the set and that was working a lot and i think gemino built some stuff for me and we actually made some scenes and he was developing these characters it was really interesting actually what he was doing he didn't get to finish it because i think the pressure then he got nervous and it got tight and then the story got kind of lost yeah but i was there one day during the lighting setup we were all dressed uh all made up all dressed in these period costumes standing you know and like this for eight hours basically so you're you're there and you're trying to be patient and that one time the woman next to me told me a dirty joke whispered in my ear and i laughed and it went like that he turned around he heard the laugh and he said willem step out and that was it yeah so i went home with my tail between my legs and that was a good start [Music] basically in 1986 you were cast in the film that would catapult your career oliver stone's platoon the film is about a young soldier who learns the horrors of the war in vietnam you played one of his commanding officers sergeant elias tell us about how you got that role it was a movie he was trying to get made for many years it was a personal movie and it was a movie that actors talk about this a lot but it was very important that we learned how to do soldier things right you were put into training as a group it was crazy you could never do this now i mean they took us put us in a bus drove out in the middle of the jungle had us get out of the bus and the bus drove away and i remember kevin dillon saying oh man i i'm gonna i gotta call my agent i'm gonna call my agent and they were like they were like you know what good luck so we were out there and for two weeks we played soldier which sounds a little silly but we really learned how to do things we learned how to be in nature we were sleeping very little and of course it's not being a soldier but it was it was the thing that helped us uh get into their heads of course well let's take a look at a clip from platoon i love this place at night this dies there's no right or wrong in them they're just there that's a nice way of putting it barnes got it in for you doesn't he barnes believes in what he's doing and you you believe in 65 yeah now no what happened today is just the beginning we're gonna lose this war come on you really think so us we've been kicking other people's asses for so long i figure it's time we got ours kicked the process of of of working directly with oliver stone what was that like i was great he was demanding he was the man you know it was his story so we were there for him uh he was the authority he's the guy that went through it so you know we wanted to be true to his his passion we were all young kids behringer was like the guy that was an established movie actor i had done some movies but still i was a downtown theater guy and you look at that film again and there's a lot of people that went on to have some very great careers and uh when i was there my plane was the last plane in before the philippine revolution happened so i was stuck there for uh two weeks so that was that kind of set up things too the only thing that you do have to do i think when you arrive at a movie you have to um kind of agree on what you're doing yeah that's all and identify what kind of movie it is but in in the case of platoon there were people that were non-actors there were people that had done movies there were people that were very ambitious there were people that this was a one-off for them there were people that were military people it was a mix and that created a community a humanity that was wasn't just didn't make it top heavy we didn't all want the same thing so it allowed us to think a little broader and feel a little broader because uh we were experiencing other people's experiences right you were nominated for your first academy award for best supporting actor for this movie yeah which was great yeah um i i i saw this movie in the movie theater with my father actually and uh uh he told me to go to the bathroom because i was crying too hard he was like go to the bathroom so by your mid-30s you had established yourself in movies and theater and then you get a call from martin scorsese uh to uh play jesus would you describe the conversation i was teaching in massachusetts with the company and i was staying at a little bed and breakfast place you know living very modest life and i didn't even have a phone in this place so the little house phone of this bed and breakfast they could say there's a call for you oh my gosh and it's like it's your agent and i he said yeah what do you want he said can you get down to new york tomorrow because martin scorsese would like to meet you you know and uh i said okay and i said what for and he said last temptation of christ and i said yeah but what role and they said stupid jesus so i went down there i read the script and then i saw i get it did you have an expectation in terms of what the controversy of of making this kind of film would be not at all because it was done with such devotion right you know often i'm not thinking about the audience right you know you can't because then you start to get away from your experience and you start imagining what people need and that's always the problem so i'm not thinking about the audience but i can honestly say when when the controversy happened it really surprised me [Music] during my most formative years as an aspiring actor um i knew i wanted to be an actor in high school i knew i wanted to get into college and study acting and in this in this period you were so present there was agent ward in mississippi burning um uh directed by alan parker with ewan gene hackman there was david lynch's wilded heart oh yeah bravo okay so you have the quintessential straight man in mississippi burning beautiful script i thought it was a dud role but gene hackman i adored and it was a beautiful story and alan parker i liked a lot and it was a good uh project so i wanted to be there for that as it turned out it ended up being a great role and partly maybe because i didn't expect anything and i was there for gene i was the straight man to gene i totally accepted that and i totally loved that and out of that kind of submission to my place in the story there were great rewards because i found things that i would never uh had if i was kind of more aggressive and thought this is a great role i got to do something right right right uh wild at heart beautiful script wacky it's a it's uh david lynch is a great filmmaker um the character it's a bad guy just described as having rotten teeth and that's about it and uh when i met david lynch he said you know he basically said yeah let's do this thing we got to get you to a dentist and i said what because i thought okay we'll discolor my teeth or something he said no no we got to get you some dentures so i got these teeth that were top and bottom and they were little stumpy teeth little rotten stumpy teeth with big gums and they were so big because they went over my teeth that i couldn't close my mouth so when i'd be there i'd be like this and if you do this all of you you can do this at home or here if you go like this for me that goes right through my body and all of a sudden i feel kind of a lasciviousness in a kind of you know i'm like i want to chew on something and then he handed me my costume there wasn't a big discussion about what do you want where's he come from where he's here's your costume willem i put on that costume i felt it you know yeah i didn't study an accent but one came into my head and you know i'm not you know i think it is a good role and i think it's a as much as you don't to judge your performance i like that performance but the cool thing is i did nothing i think sometimes when you understand something too much it's done and you don't have the energy of discovery but when you're presented with something but it's not really you it's not your experience then you have to create a relationship to that experience and that's one of the thrills of acting that's one of the thrills of being a human being you know that's the good game that's the good game that's where your life meets your work now we're in the year 2000 and you appeared in the movie shadow of the vampire you play max schreck the german actor who played count orlok in the 1922 film nosferatu um you're the actual vampire pretending to be the actor i love this performance that was great fun because i mean in terms of performance you know you're dealing with a mask i mean a very literal mask yeah i'm three hours to get into makeup in the morning and i'm sitting in a chair and i'm looking at myself in the mirror as they're applying these things and i'm slowly disappearing and this other person this other figure is coming forward then i had a course that i had a beautiful costume all this stuff i no longer look like myself i no longer sound like myself and no longer feel like myself so that's a good place to start the people i was working with because i had this extensive makeup of three hours to go in in the morning and three hours at the end of the day they never saw me so i was like another creature i mean uh some of the crew i know they never saw me as me you received your second academy award nomination for this movie yep it was quite remarkable that people found that movie and yeah and that's recognized right no i was very thankful [Music] i i want to get into a couple of quotes here he said i look like the boy next door if you live next door to the mausoleum [Laughter] i was having a bad hair day i was feeling bad about myself that day yeah i don't live with that quote but yeah i said it um do you think that that plays into uh uh the roles that you get i don't think of myself looking unusual but when i first started out you know when i first started out people always wanted to cast me as strange characters are heavy characters when you worry about getting typecast you're worried about if people are seeing something in you that is just you and doesn't go away is like inflexible and one of those things can be your face or your appearance or your physicality so sometimes early in my career you know people would say oh that face that face you know and sometimes as a compliment sometimes not so much as a compliment you're the rule breaker you know you play the leading man you play the villain you play jesus christ and and and then and move on to another character and no one will forget it but in some cases they kind of have to be reminded that you played jesus christ and marty scorsese's movie you know because you define yourself so consistently with with with such huge characters that that always contradict the next it's amazing you say you have another quote from you that says it's never one or the other it's always that balance between control and abandon how much control and how much do you let it go and and that you're always regulating between the two you need to start with something so you need some structure and um you know you've got to get something to get you going but you can't be a prisoner to it so you gotta make a plan but be willing to abandon it and i guess that's the game you play as far as control and abandon you know after you do it for a while you're you're okay with failing you're okay about getting off base but this control and and abandoned thing is always in play the florida project was easily one of the best films of 2017 and your performance was repeatedly called a career best you portray bobby the kind manager of a hotel inhabited by poor transient people who have no place else to go what attracted you to this movie the way that sean baker wanted to make it and the way he makes his films i was attracted to the filmmaker um and the opportunity not to be an actor because a lot of the people in the movie are either first time actors or non-actors and where we were shooting the people were really gonna they were gonna show us how to do this movie it was about going to a real place and becoming part of the fabric of that place and in this case the guy's a manager i mean i became a manager it was like taking a job at mcdonald's you know i learned how to do the things that i did and that's what i did and we rolled cameras and you know there was some there is dialogue written but what i'm doing is what the manager taught me to do and the beautiful setup is that guy in real life and the character you know he cares for these people this is his community this is a little microcosm this is a society and they're under siege so that's what's expressed in the movie that the importance of us taking care of each other and um you know some people are like wow i've never seen you so sweet it's like you don't know me let's take a look at a clip okay what a choice okay thank you hey i thought you were thirsty yeah aren't you gonna drink it now yes yes good sure got it here you come on this property again and you won't believe me you understand i don't know what you're talking about you don't know what i'm talking about i'm gonna play it that way huh hey hey all right charlie coachman of cherry hill new jersey you can't kick me out that's my license i'm going to call your name into the county sheriff now you get the out of here so this is a moment where the the character is going beyond his managerial duties just to give some context to it because this scary guy is hanging around the kids but it's a regular thing in these places yeah yeah because there's a lot of you know people are living five to a single room and they send the kids out the weather's nice and the kids are are by themselves a lot so there's a lot of unaccompanied kids i mean this isn't like some dramatic thing to kick it up this is going on in these places this this this committed honesty got you your third academy award nomination for best supporting actor which deserves a round of applause because it really was yeah for a small movie people find it it's very it's gratifying because you don't feel like uh you know somebody bought your nomination right that was an ominous murmur [Applause] right i didn't mean it to be that heavy [Applause] you know but just when you go into award season and one movie has a budget and you can't even advertise where the movie is playing and another movie has huge billboards and full-page ads in the new york times you know people start to think that means something um in 2018 you took on another historical figure the the great impressionist artist vincent van gogh in at eternity's gate directed by julian schnabel and for the role you studied painting it's a movie made by a painter who happens to be a great filmmaker too about a painter and um [Music] the movie is very much about painting so i the lead character i had to paint it was important to be intimate with his struggles not just psychologically but you know how what is painting about so julian was a fantastic teacher and i painted a lot and it gave me a different relationship it changed how i look at things and we're shooting in the places that he was so when you're in that landscape in your painting you're having a dialogue with something that's been in the air let's look at a clip of this movie please there's something inside me i don't know what it is what i say nobody else sees and sometimes it frightens me i think i'm losing my mind but then i say to myself i'll show what i see to my human brothers who can't see it it's a privilege i can give them hope and consolation you're confusing people you're confusing yourself with your paintings i am my paintings what do you mean by consolation hope i'd like to share my vision with people who can't see what i see the way i see yes but why because my vision is closer to the reality of the world i can make people feel what it's like to be alive that got you your fourth academy award nomination your first in the best leading actor category and i just have to say that out loud that shot you know i'm looking straight down the barrel of a camera yeah i'm speaking to a black hole but i'm also speaking to myself and i'm trying to really see how i feel about the things that i'm saying and that was the task but by that time i can take his words and they move me so you let them work on you just like reading a poem your latest movie the lighthouse is shot entirely in black and white it's the story of two lighthouse keepers one played by robert pattison and of course you it's just the two of you in the film during a horrendous storm let's take a look at your performance in the lighthouse and some land with eyes right as a lady come to this rock play in the tuff you make me laugh with your false grump you pretended there's some mystery in your quietudes but there ain't no mystery you're an open book a picture says i a painted actress screaming in the footlights a what wants to be coveted for nothing but being born crying about the silver spoon what should have been yours now look at you crying boo what you gonna do why this project oh i had seen a robert edgar's first film the witch and i thought it was beautifully made and in fact it's one of those cases where i spoke to people that represent me and said get me a meeting with this guy if he can see something that we could do together i would love that and it happened [Music] if van gogh was to paint a portrait of a working actor it may very well have been of willem dafoe you have said that quote i remember my life by my movies and tonight we thank you for sharing those memories with us here are your students hi my name is estelle olivia i'm a third year actor and playwright and you've spoken beautifully about how costume pieces or settings or working with your team have gifted you with insights into characters could you speak a bit about what you do to prepare for a character when you first get a script when you first decide you want to do it you know it depends what's available uh it's about going towards that character to say you know to make that parallel life so you got to make a some sort of history you know some people are very good at taking stuff from their life and then applying it to it i like to pretend i like to learn stuff that makes a new life so you look at it and you also i also look for the triggers it can be an accent so then if i think the accent is going to be the key to the text then i really concentrate on that accent very early to get into the text and then i sit with it i remember jennifer jason lee used to read the script over and over and over and over and over again and i've started to do that a little bit after i saw her do it things to make it you make it your own hi i'm justin i'm a third year director okay uh you talked about how a good director creates a world that you can just arrive at and play in are there any other qualities of directors that you that you really like to see when you arrive on a set you know they breathe it they need it they they have a passion for it and that's what i seek out in the director they aren't just technicians executing they're people in search of something and you hop on for the ride and help them try to find it thank you sure uh hi i'm sam i'm a second year actor um we've talked a lot about pedro's favorites but i want to talk about one of my favorites which is spider-man okay i as a child tried to fight you and my imagination all the time um anyways but what i really wanted to actually ask you about was why was norman a good choice for you and what was it like reacting off yourself in the mirror scenes listen spider-man was a lot of fun sam ramy was passionate this wasn't a job for him he felt deeply about this story he really did it was a very personal film the technology was kind of new we did lots of stuff on wires i love to do athletic stuff action stuff as far as the mirror scene uh sam raimi gave me dr jekyll and mr hyde to read for example for a little inspiration but there were technical challenges to being in the right place in the mirror having them see me and then see the reflection so i talked about tasks i had lots of technical tasks and rather than saying that was a pain in the ass i embraced them and actually that helps you it's like being an athlete you've got to get there and there and there that scene was challenging but fun amazing thank you yeah hi my name is marcella i'm a third year actor i just wanted to know out of all the roles that you've done is there any one that sticks out particularly as the one that made the most impact on you as an artist well it's kind of fresh but i'd say van gogh was big that'll stay with me a very long time last temptation stayed with me for a very long time i think the ones that dealt with the spiritual life i guess really i'm marlene quije i'm a third year actor first question is what is your favorite word oh this is that thing favorite word uh boy you know you got me wrong shoes what is your least favorite word liquid [Laughter] what turns you on creatively spiritually or emotionally putting my finger in a light socket what turns you off taking my finger out what is your favorite curse word um the sweet one is um jeez louise [Music] and the rough one is the triple puppish [Applause] what sound or noise do you love you know the same one you love actually i don't know that [Applause] what sound or noise do you hate uh someone chewing on cotton with their teeth when their mouth is really dry that squeak that's very specific what profession other than your own would you like to attempt to have a little kool-aid stand and sell kool-aid on the street in the suburban neighborhood for a quarter [Laughter] what profession would you not like to do ah i'd hate to be in an office all day if heaven exists what would you like to hear god say when you arrive at the pearly gates stay as long as you like thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you

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Keywords: pedro pascal, pedropascal, willem dafoe, pedritoposting

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Length: 42min 23sec (2543 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 10 2021