Willem Dafoe has acted in more than 130 projects during his decade-spanning career. Never sticking to one genre, Dafoe has crafted a filmography ranging from animated family pictures to gruesome horror. His dedication to the craft has made him one of the most revered and recognizable performers today.
From John Wick to Finding Nemo, Dafoe has left his mark on cinema. Whether they be outlandish and bombastic, or a true highlight of his aptitude, here are some of the actor’s most unique performances.
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8 American Psycho (2000)
Lions Gates Films
Mary Harron’s adaptation of American Psycho — based on the Bret Easton Ellis novel of the same name — is known for many things, such as the film’s cast of well-known stars. Amongst Chloë Sevigny, Jared Leto, and a deranged performance from Christian Bale, Dafoe appears as off-kilter detective Donald Kimball in this psychological satire.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
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Kimball is introduced as the lead investigator in a murder case. His notes guide him to the guilty Patrick Bateman, played by Bale. What makes this seemingly uniform performance from Dafoe unique, is in Harron’s attentive and sharp directing.
Harron had directed Dafoe to deliver his lines three times, each from a different perspective. Dafoe was directed to act as if Kimball knew Bateman was guilty, again as diligently suspicious, and finally as entirely oblivious. Harron then spliced the footage and arranged it in a new order, making it difficult to discern Kimball’s stance on Bateman. The result is a rotating display of the film’s ranging tones. Seeing Dafoe transition from carefree to authoritative without cue makes his scenes with Bale some of the film’s most tensely humorous.
7 Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
20th Century Fox
Throughout Dafoe’s filmography, he typically shines in voice roles and in Wes Anderson films alike. The actor was as memorable as ever in 2003’s Finding Nemo, and serves well as the oddball first mate Klaus Daimler in Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Equally engaging in other Anderson pictures, Dafoe is most entertaining as Rat, or The Rat, a villain in the auteur’s stop-motion Fantastic Mr. Fox adaptation.
While brief, Dafoe’s voice role brings the best aspects of his voiceover work and character acting together. Rat’s raspy-voiced drawl is a delightful touch, while his movements, captured with animation references from both Dafoe and Anderson, are purely enthusiastic. Behind-the-scenes footage of Dafoe and other cast-mates acting out their roles depicts the overall care that went into the Anderson film.
6 The Northman (2022)
Universal Pictures
Robert Eggers’ Viking epic The Northman features an array of great performers. In a restricted, yet massively important role is Dafoe as Heimir the Fool, serving as a vital figure in antihero Prince Amleth’s bizarre spiritual journey. Providing the means for a psychedelic ritual — one which forever binds Amleth to an insatiable desire for vengeance — Heimir is nearly a symbol of hope for the young prince. A harborer of his right-of-passage, and a symbol of his focus, it’s made clear Amleth does not forget Heimir’s influence well into adulthood.
While the role is limited, Heimir follows up on the Eggers-Dafoe magic seen in 2019’s The Lighthouse, and once again unleashes the wholehearted madness of a Dafoe wildcard. While Dafoe would have been welcomed in a leading role, the scaled-back performance is equal parts unsettling as it is captivating.
5 The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
Out of Dafoe’s earlier leading roles, which began to take off in the 1980s, this is one of the actor’s most daring. Playing Jesus Christ, even Dafoe would later refer to the performance as brazen, but the film’s take on the religious figure is all the more compelling with his presence.
A Martin Scorsese picture, The Last Temptation of Christ’s take on Jesus is not conventional. It does not align with the writing found in the Gospel or other religious texts, and instead takes inspiration for its main character from the novel of the same name by Nikos Kazantzakis.
The film’s take on the religious figure searches for nuance in Jesus’ relationship with divinity and sinning. Searching for direction by any means, The Last Temptation’s Jesus is flawed, personal, and by his own admission, not always so courageous. Still, the tale shows Jesus pushing himself to the utmost vulnerability, seeking self-imposed punishment in exchange for forgiveness. In his early thirties, when the film was released, this was a challenging leading role for Dafoe.
4 The Spider-Man Universe (2002-2021)
Sony Pictures Releasing
Appearing in four films within the Spider-Man universe, twice as a central villain and twice again through cameos, Dafoe’s tenure as Marvel’s iconic Green Goblin has spanned nineteen years, albeit with a gap in the resume. Dafoe’s Goblin first appeared in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, serving as the main villain, then later appearing as visions in Raimi’s direct sequels. Dafoe’s take on the villain received even wider scope with his innovative revival in Jon Watts’ Spider-Man: No Way Home, elevating his role as the Marvel antagonist into a nineteen-year affair.
Not often achieved on such scale, Green Goblin is not only a unique role for Dafoe, but a unique comic book-to-film translation. In what feels like an endless pool of comic book villains, Dafoe’s Goblin gains serious credit for terrorizing multiple generations of Spider-Men, and for proving he is still one of the greats years down the line.
3 Antichrist (2009)
Nordisk Film Distribution
One of his more visually unsettling films, Dafoe plays He in Lars von Trier’s Antichrist. Acting alongside a superb Charlotte Gainsbourg, as She, Dafoe plays a husband who forces his grieving wife into exposure therapy, following the death of their son. Blaming herself, he brings his wife to a cabin where she once spent a summer with their son. There, he expects her to overcome the tragedy. What occurs instead is a series of events which spiral into graphic horror and sexual unease.
Dafoe’s turn as the character is starling and expertly crafted. Cementing his range once again, Dafoe plays an amoral character who interchanges between the villain and the victim throughout. Convincingly carrying some of the film’s most physical feats, too, the actor is bewitching in the twisted role.
2 The Lighthouse (2019)
A24
A performance that left Robert Pattinson reportedly terrified, Dafoe stars in this Robert Eggers-directed fantasy horror following two lighthouse keepers with severe cases of cabin fever. Always moving in crescendo, their madness and contempt for one another festers throughout, showcasing Pattinson and Dafoe at their most raw and energized. While Pattinson is excellent, Dafoe’s performance in The Lighthouse is a bit more hardy.
Similar to Detective Kimball, it is often difficult to get a read on Dafoe’s character, the longtime lighthouse keeper Thomas Wake. Seemingly brimming with secrets, Dafoe plays a Kafkaesque antagonist opposite Pattinson. Throughout, Dafoe feels omnipotent atop the lonesome lighthouse.
1 At Eternity’s Gate (2018)
Netflix
One of Dafoe’s four Oscar nominations is for playing Vincent van Gogh in Julian Schnabel’s At Eternity’s Gate. His take on the tortured artist is not only Dafoe’s most tactful in memory, but his most human, thoughtful, and poignant, too. As if stepping through one of van Gogh’s self-portraits, Dafoe physically transforms into the Dutch painter. Informed by a close reading of his known characteristics, scriptwriters Jean-Claude Carrière, Louise Kugelberg, and Schnabel illustrate van Gogh’s complexities and shortcomings with care.
Dafoe’s portrayal is particularly vulnerable when acting alongside Rupert Friend and Oscar Isaac, who play van Gogh’s younger brother and close friend, respectively. The artist’s views on the world, which both inspired and alienated him, are conveyed by Dafoe with palpable heartbreak. Making Dafoe’s uncanny embodiment feel all the more anomalous, the actor was sixty-two when the film was released: a quarter-century older than van Gogh at his death.
