With theatre, you have to be ready for anything.
— Willem Dafoe
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.
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.
I love doing action and stuff; the problem is usually action movies are not that interesting. Also as I get older I feel like there's less opportunities for me.
When you work on anything, you want to find the range of impulses - which ones get portrayed is another question, but you want to have that complexity and that fullness, even if you're playing a cartoon character.
Emotionally men and women are different, but only as a result of the physical differences. It all comes back to our bodies.
I've never had any close male friends. The most important relationships in my life have always been with women.
I think, as I've gotten older, I've been able to be more reckless with my choices, because practically speaking, you get less careful. Your choices become more instinctive, and you feel like if you make a mistake, it won't destroy you.
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 am confident only when I am constantly in motion. Between projects, the doubt creeps in.
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 love theaters. I love the event of going there and seeing a movie with a lot of people. I like the community coming around the story.
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.
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.
A lot of critics are lazy. They don't want to look closely and analyze something for what it is. They take a quick first impression and then rush to compare it to something they've seen before.
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.
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 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.
In order to inhabit a character, you've got to embrace and empathise with them.
Corruption is something you face all the time. Avoid it.
The director's very important to me, particularly when the director has a recognizable style.
Basically, when I hear the words 'family drama,' I run in the opposite direction.
Sometimes I think women are lucky because they can develop in ways men can't. The old-boy network may be oppressive to women, but it actually stunts men in terms of personal growth.
In my experience, sometimes a movie just hits at the wrong time, gets the wrong press, or gets the wrong representation, and it gets misunderstood.
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.
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.
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.
Sometimes I say I feel more like a dancer than an actor, because there are things implied about being an actor that I don't really like. I feel more comfortable with the word 'performer'. I like being the thing. I like being the doer. There's a factualness to it. And then certain resonances happen out of how you apply yourself physically.
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.
I was watching 'Wild at Heart,' and I can honestly say I did nothing for that apart from show up!
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.
When I was a kid I was very interested in the idea of the will, finding out what you're capable of. I liked those kind of challenges.
My dad was a surgeon, my mom a nurse, and they were always out working. I had five sisters and a brother. They didn't care what I got up to.
I try to do as many of my own stunts as possible. If you keep on taking yourself out of the role you play, you lose the thread of the character.
I think back story can help guide your choices, but when you're playing a scene, you're not making choices; you're just intuitive.
I do know that I like to play characters that are sometimes a little on the outside - that's because it feels kind of romantic and sexier to me. I really think they are the people that we learn lessons from.
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.
Action breeds inspiration more than inspiration breeds action.
Truth is, generally I like film festivals; somewhere at some level there's an exchange of ideas.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Great theatre is about challenging how we think and encouraging us to fantasize about a world we aspire to.
The best thing an actor can be is ready. Be flexible, be ready.
I do want to be in mainstream movies that are going to be seen. I suppose it satisfies the showbiz side of me.
