Willem Dafoe Quotes
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Trust is always a factor. You've just got to look at the big picture, and you've got to look at the small picture - the small picture in the sense that you've got to make every scene work and you've got to deal with what people are presenting you with, too.
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I'm never in Hollywood! I'm a theatre actor that lives in New York. I'm very seldom in Los Angeles. I don't dislike LA, I just don't think it's a very healthy place for me to be all the time. When I'm shooting a movie there and am working I'm perfectly happy. But when I'm not working or engaged in something it's a place that I wouldn't live.
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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.
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The best thing an actor can be is ready. Be flexible, be ready.
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Usually when you meet with a director, just meeting them after you've seen something you're interested in, they say, "Oh I'd love to work together," and sometimes you never hear from them again.
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I'm not attracted to naturalism, I'm not attracted to behavior, I'm attracted to dance. I'm attracted to gesture, I'm attracted to singing with your voice, as opposed to having a natural manner. I'm a theater actor first, so that probably influences a lot of my approach. And I think in many ways, naturalism has ruined movies.
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Weirdness is not my game. I'm just a square boy from Wisconsin.
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It's too easy to trivialize people. The Internet does it all the time.
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That's a frustration sometimes, that certain directors that I'd like to work with, they just aren't doing stories that I'm sort of castable in. Not always, but sometimes I have that frustration.
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I don't have a preference between theatre and film; I like to do both. But I will say that there's something about theatre that is more nourishing and sustaining than film ever can be.
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Sometimes you feel like you have to do research to make something, other times you know you don't feel it so much.
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Let's hope I never end up on a deserted island, because I could never make a decision on which three CDs to take with me.
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It makes me laugh when I hear a guy talking about being in touch with his feminine side. But I gravitate towards women, I identify with them. And I do cry very easily, more and more as I get older.
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As you get older, you suffer fools less easily. That's why there's all those cranky character actors. I'm an exception. I'm a sweetheart.
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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.
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You have to lose yourself to find yourself.
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All the time, as an actor, you want to be asking what's next and where things are going. If you're not asking those questions, you're not growing.
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I feel like it's important to be flexible, particularly when I'm coming in late in the game and I'm connective tissue in the story. I'm not at the very center. It's important for me to have a certain kind of flexibility and try to help people do what they need to do.
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Performing is about developing empathy, which leads us to a broader view of the world and encourages us to develop compassion; so we can comfort each other and not be so brutal with each other.
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Central to being an actor is pretending, and the adventure of it all. That's why you become a junkie for different kinds of situations.
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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.
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I'm an optimist. I hope if a movie's good that it will be a success, but as we know, that's not always true, just because of popular taste, advertising, distribution patterns - there's lots of reasons.
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I aspire to be an instrument of the director. I'm happiest like that. The stronger the director, the more I'm willing to give them. It's not just about admiration for their films, it's how they deal with you, and whether they get you or the way you work. If they don't, you better adjust your way of working to suit them. I want to work with people who are good at what they do, and people who are passionate. As you get older, you suffer fools less easily. That's why there's all those cranky character actors. I'm an exception. I'm a sweetheart.
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Film is fragmented and gets into lots of other people's hands. There are a lot of pleasures that theatre gives me. You get to perform uninterrupted.