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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Willem Dafoe

Beauty

You

Target

" Plenty of bad movies are very successful, and plenty of good movies are not. And distribution is so crazy, some films won't even get their day in court. "

" The worst thing is to get involved with people who aren't passionate about what they're doing. "

" You have to lose yourself to find yourself. "

" Corruption is something you face all the time. Avoid it. "

" I have no doubt that if I met Bob Dylan, it would be disappointing - and annoying to him. But that's why I like Bob Dylan. "

" Film is an editor's medium. You can create very good raw material and they can make it horrible, or you can do not so well and they can make it beautiful. You don't really know. "

" I'm no different to anyone else; I want people to like me. I just don't particularly want them to understand me. "

" Emotionally men and women are different, but only as a result of the physical differences. It all comes back to our bodies. "

" I knew very little about 'Spider-Man'. I grew up more in the 'Superman' generation. 'Spider-Man' - I didn't know so much. But it is a really successful franchise, and I'm happy to be involved with it. "

Willem Dafoe

Generation

Successful

" In order to inhabit a character, you've got to embrace and empathise with them. "

" When I give over to somebody's vision rather than have an idea of what I need to do, it takes me to places I wouldn't have got to by myself. I'm always attracted to a strong director. "

" I set myself challenges every time I work. Ideally, I approach everything as though it's the first time - with a beginner's mind and an amateur's love. "

" With theatre, you have to be ready for anything. "

" I think on some level, you do your best things when you're a little off-balance, a little scared. You've got to work from mystery, from wonder, from not knowing. "

" I'm one of those people who when I go over a bridge, I want to jump. It's just this intense tickle in the back of my throat. It's like I'm on the verge the whole time I'm walking over that bridge, and I'm not going to get a release until I jump. "

" The mask can be a limitation, but you just deal with it. You do get superhuman strength and pumpkin bombs and all this other stuff to express yourself with.' "

" It's true in the beginning I started playing villains, and I think that's pretty clear, because if you don't conventionally look a certain way and you've got a certain kind of presence when you're young, then what's available to you is character roles, and the best character roles when you're young tend to be villains. "

" The bad things about theatre get balanced by the good things in film and vice versa. So to tell you the truth, I love it when I can go back and forth - it feeds different parts of you and exercises different muscles. "

" I was watching 'Wild at Heart,' and I can honestly say I did nothing for that apart from show up! "

" 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. "

Willem Dafoe

Got

Role

" 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. "

Willem Dafoe

Man

Lie

" The Midwest isn't somewhere you mix with those from the performing arts. But my mum and dad would go off to Chicago every so often to see shows. They would bring back the albums and the movies, those little eight metres, and we would all watch. I think that was when I fell in love with acting. "

" I love Sam Neill. The thing that I always say about him, and I think it's true, is he's so dry. When he's serious, I think he's joking; when he's joking, I think he's serious. "

" In films you do a scene, you play around with it and unless you're doing a lot of reshooting, which no one has the luxury to do, you deal with the problem for a day and then you move on. On some level, it never allows you to go very deep into what performing is about. "

" I'm a task-oriented actor. A pretender. And I try to invent my process anew each time I make a new project. So I frown on any method. "

" I guess they often cast me as the bad guy, because I'm not, er, conventional looking. I look sort of violent. I'm the odd one out, the outsider. "

Willem Dafoe

Bad

Bad Guy

" One of the pleasures of being an actor is quite simply taking a walk in someone else's shoes. And when I look at the roles I've played, I'm kind of amazed at all the wonderful adventures I've had and the different things I've learned. "

" The English Patient' is about the coming together of a French-Canadian nurse, an English patient, a Sikh in a turban and me, Caravaggio, and each of us is seeking a resolution to our own problems. "

Willem Dafoe

Together

" I'll never be able to really see a film that I'm in. "