Acclaimed actor Willem Dafoe recently told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that one of his favorite memories was going to see horror movies at the Viking Theatre in Appleton, where he was born.
He said those experiences, as well as his time with a theater group on Water Street in Milwaukee, shaped the actor he is today.
On Christmas Day, Dafoe will hit the big screen as vampire hunter Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz in the upcoming movie, “Nosferatu.”
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The new horror film by Robert Eggers is a remake of the iconic 1922 German vampire film of the same name. It arrives more than 100 years after the premiere of the original. It’s also Dafoe’s second run at a project related to “Nosferatu,” after he earned an Oscar nomination for his role in 2000’s “Shadow of the Vampire.”
Dafoe studied theater at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee before dropping out to join Theatre X, an experimental theater group in Milwaukee. Since then, Dafoe has appeared in more than 150 films and has received four Oscar nominations over the course of his career.
Dafoe brings nuance and humor to his role as scientist-turned-occultist Von Franz. Dafoe in his interview described how he had to draw on skills he learned as a young actor to meet the technical challenges of a film like “Nosferatu.”
“You have to be doing what the character is doing, but also you have to submit to certain technical structures and limitations and rules. I learned how to do that with pleasure,” Dafoe said. “(A) scene has a kind of energy, tension and focus that can only come when you have a lot to do and you can’t do anything but what you’re required to.”
Dafoe joined “Wisconsin Today” to talk about his upcoming film and how his time in Appleton and Milwaukee fit into his evolution as an actor and artist.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Rob Ferrett: Growing up as a kid in Appleton, what was your relationship with horror films like “Nosferatu?”
Willem Dafoe: I used to go to the Viking Theatre in Appleton, Wisconsin. One of my favorite memories is going to see horror movies, to tell you the truth. And also, my parents would occasionally get time to make it down to Chicago, and they’d bring back these little 8 mm films that were reductions of classic Hammer films with Boris Karloff and Vincent Price. And I really grew up on those. That was a huge part of my earliest cinema experiences.
RF: You’ve mentioned going to see movies at the Downer Theatre in Milwaukee when you lived there. How did that shape your movie taste?
WD: What was beautiful about the Downer was they showed foreign films and they showed some art movies … and some of the earliest independent movies. I’ve got to check on my time here, but I may have seen “Pink Flamingos” there when I was a kid. And I also remember seeing some of my first foreign films there. So, that was very important. The Downer was cool.
RF: Also in Milwaukee, you were at Theatre X, an experimental theater company. How did that inform the work you did later?
WD: It was a group theater that actually made original work. Often, we had a playwright and residents who would also direct the plays. So, it was a small company. We had a theater on Water Street, very close to where the performing arts center is now, and I was there for a couple years.
It was a great experience. We were people who lived, ate and breathed theater. We’d go to work every day. We toured a little bit. That was really a formative experience for me. My time in Milwaukee was very happy. I liked Milwaukee a lot.
RF: You also did experimental theater work in New York. When you’re coming into a role like in “Nosferatu,” do you find yourself drawing on lessons from those early days on stage?
WD: Certainly my 27 years with the Wooster Group in New York City formed me as a cinema actor, particularly because we worked with a certain amount of technology. In that theater, the technicians were as important as the actors. They were almost interchangeable with the actors, because the actors had technical tasks and the technicians had actor tasks.
That was also very useful for me — accepting the technical responsibilities you sometimes have in cinema — because in cinema, you sometimes have to have a double focus. You have to be doing what the character is doing, but also you have to submit to certain technical structures and limitations and rules.
I learned how to do that with pleasure, because that allows you to focus better. When you don’t have a structure or guardrails, I think you can tend to sit in things too much and be too egocentric in your performing. This really forces you out of yourself and gives you so many responsibilities that you can’t fall out of the scene.
RF: How did you put that technical experience into practice in “Nosferatu?”
WD: One thing that’s kind of interesting about Director Robert Eggers is: When we arrive, we rehearse. But we don’t talk about character. We don’t really do scene study. He shows us a very specific design of what the camera is going to see.
It’s very complicated. Sometimes you have seven or eight people in one shot that goes on for a very long time. Everybody has to work together (and) be very precise in the marks they hit and the relationship to the movement and to each other. Not only does it create a kind of complicity and cooperation among everyone, but also it ups the stakes because nobody can make a mistake. … You’ve got to live and die with that shot.
RF: “Nosferatu” is a classic story that’s been remade a couple of times now. What makes this new take on that tradition stand out to you?
WD: It’s a Robert Eggers film for starters, and he’s a very singular filmmaker in the way he approaches period films. It’s a passion project for him, it’s not a (straightforward) remake. It’s a personal film. One big difference is in the telling of the story. We experience it through the character of Ellen, played by Lily-Rose Depp.
RF: You play the role of Professor Von Franz, the classic vampire hunter similar to Van Helsing in “Dracula.” How did you tackle playing him?
WD: You’re right. He sort of functions as the Van Helsing character. But I think he’s much more than that. He’s an occultist. He’s someone that’s involved in alchemy and mystical things. He’s the only character that really sees what the Ellen character is going through.
He gives another perspective because everyone else just thinks she’s possessed and they want to solve the problem. But he posits the idea that you have to recognize the dark side to appreciate the light. The light doesn’t exist without the dark. And he is a person that is studied at exploring the unseen and studied at wondering what is beyond this life that we have.
RF: This is your third movie with Eggers. What keeps you coming back?
WD: He just gives me fun things to do. He challenges me. He knows how to speak the actors’ language. He knows how to trigger the best out of me, and the sets that he makes are so beautiful. They’re so precise that they really help you to inhabit these characters. He’s a great writer. He does incredible research. All of his movies are very rooted.
You can really enter these period films and experience it with the characters. They feel relevant today, even though they’re set in another time. These are not museum pieces, they’re living stories that he’s a great believer in.
