A Conversation with Willem Dafoe about Traveling
Interviewed by Naheed Simjee at Chateau Marmont, April 11, 2013
With six films in post-production and an upcoming project with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Willem Dafoe spends majority of his time in character and in motion. The well-traveled, constantly working actor admits to not being a very good tourist, but rather uses his trips as a means for renewal and self-reflection. Known for his eccentric roles in both film and experimental theatre, he talks to TTA about travel being an opportunity to step out of the norm and how it can be instrumental in breaking down cultural conditioning.
What brings you to Los Angeles?
You know, I had some work to do with Pixar up in San Francisco and I don’t come here that often. It’s always an occasion if I have a reason to be on the West Coast so I usually take time in Los Angeles to have some meetings, take care of business and enjoy the temperature.
Where do you call home now?
I live kind of equally between New York and Rome, but I like to work a lot, so I travel a lot.
Are you able to explore the cities you’re working in?
As part of the work, usually, but not separate from the work. When you’re working, you only have the energy and the interest in what you’re working on.
Right.
I’m not a very good tourist but I’m great at going places and I love to change my routine and make a new one in the new place, to pass through and learn how things work in that area.
Did you go on vacations with your family as a child? I’ve read you have five sisters…
I have five sisters and two brothers, which is big. My parents were typical Americans, they worked very hard and they didn’t take vacations really, but the one thing that I did do when I was a kid was my father would take my brothers and I fishing — on one occasion, we brought my sister — but only the boys would go up to Northern Canada to fish with my father and those are probably my earliest memories of traveling.
That is a large family. I also have five sisters.
You do?
Yeah, I have vivid memories of traveling with my family. We also lived in Canada.
Ah, where in Canada?
We lived in Toronto.
We tended to go to Ontario. Usually we’d drive as far as we could and then we’d take a bush plane out to a fishing camp.
What kind of fish did you catch?
Walleyed Pike, Northerns and sometimes Lake Trout.
You’ve spent a lot of time working outside of the United States, particularly in Germany.
Recently, yes and through the years I have, actually. I performed there a lot in the theatre because there was a period when they had (and still have) a very strong state theatre system and they also really believe in bringing in work from the outside. So there’s a lot of public money to present theatre. Being in The Wooster Group for many years, and now working with people like Richard Foreman and Bob Wilson, both highly sought after companies, I’ve spent a lot of time in Germany because of that. But it’s always specific to the project I’m working on.
Do you consider yourself an expert on traveling in Germany?
Not at all! Each time I go there, it’s a different place. A lot of the times it’s been Berlin, which is so dynamic. It changes so much. I don’t think anybody is an expert on Berlin because it’s been changing so dramatically and other than that — as I say, when I work on a film, everything is conditioned by that film so I never feel an expert on a place, I only feel an expert or that I can talk about that place in the context of the film experience.
I was able to see you perform up close last year in Bob Wilson’s The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic.
Oh, you saw that show?
I did. During Art Basel Switzerland.
Did you enjoy it?
I loved it.
Oh good! We’re doing it again. We’re going to perform it in New York and Toronto.
It was an amazing experience. Before the performance in Basel, I think you had only performed it one other time?
Yes, in Manchester.
Then the performance went to Madrid?
Yes that’s right, Basel was the tune up. It’s only a question of running the show. After a while, you get a little bit more flexible with the rhythms and the performances deepen.
To see the instant reaction of an audience after performing live must be so different that waiting until your film comes out to hear the reviews.
Yes of course. It gives you a lot of energy and it’s a totally different experience. Also in a week, I’m going to Spoleto (Italy) to start working with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Bob Wilson on a new piece, which I’m really excited about.
That is so great. What’s the difference between traveling with a performance group and traveling with the cast and crew of a film?
Well, I think the time is different. Usually with a theatre company, you get there and you have to adjust to the space and occasionally you’ll adjust the show, but not that much. So basically, you adjust to the space and you have a performance schedule every night, but you have a lot of free time during the day so there’s a little more opportunity to be a tourist and make a life when you’re there. Everything kind of points to that evening performance and you tend to have a big social life afterwards because the nature of the performance is that you have a show, friends come or the presenters take you out after the show. So you tend to have late nights, lazy days and hard work at night before you go out again, where with a film, you’re more like an invading army and you take over the place. The hours are longer and even though you’re working with the people there, who bring you closer to the place and you get used to the point of views and the customs and the way people behave, you don’t have much free time.
With regards to people and their behavior, are there any particularly memorable experiences you’ve had in these cities?
Always! That’s one of the reasons why I do what I do. I think that is one of the best things about being a performer both in film and theatre. In film, I’ve almost always shot on location, always been traveling to a place and I shoot much more out of the United States than I do in the United States, even on American Films. I think that maybe says something about how people see me or what I’m attracted to, but it’s part of the job for me. To travel is just a great opportunity to take you away from your life. You cancel some of your routines, the things you hang on to and your point of view and the opinions you have. It gives you an opportunity to kind of let those things go and make new ones or see what the bottom line is about people in general. Or sometimes it helps you to cut through your cultural conditioning and see what really matters to you. So it’s a great pleasure in that you can renew yourself and be inspired by seeing what you have in common with people and what holds you back from being able to see things as they are.
Can you tell me a little bit about filming Out of the Furnace in Braddock, PA?
Ah, Braddock, Pennsylvania. It’s a very depressed area. People were very happy about us being there. They were very sweet. But in some of the areas that we were shooting, it was just so depressed. It didn’t feel dangerous but we weren’t mixing there at all, neither was the film crew. There was heavy security.
Did you meet their famous mayor, John Fetterman?
You know, I didn’t, but people talked a lot about him and said he was a really inspirational guy! (Laughs)
I’ve heard he is an interesting man and has helped with the resurgence of Braddock.
Apparently, it’s turning around, but where we were shooting it was very depressed. How do you know about Braddock?
My friend made a documentary film about it.
It didn’t feel that foreign to me because I grew up in a paper mill town, although it didn’t have the type of economic crash that Braddock did.
You grew up in Wisconsin, right?
Yes, Appleton, Wisconsin, a mid-west industrial town, so having to make an adjustment in Braddock, Pennsylvania was something very familiar with me. I’ve also shot in Pittsburgh before.
Charlotte Gainsborough will be the second main interview in this issue. Can you talk about working on Nymphomaniac, which will be your second film together?
Charlotte is really the central character and other than Charlotte, Stellan Skarsburg has a very expansive role, but for the most part it’s pretty much an ensemble film. I didn’t work that long on it, but I was happy with my scenes with Charlotte, it was a nice reunion. We had worked together on Antichrist and they were quite different scenes. I think the movie is going to be very interesting, but I’m a huge Lars Von Trier fan, I guess that goes without saying.
During the filming of Antichrist, you were shooting scenes in an isolated cabin in Germany. How long were you there and what was that experience like?
We spent the first week shooting the first part of the film in one place and then about seven weeks shooting the scenes in the cabin. We were staying at a remote place in a small town and we would just go to work every day. It’s beautiful sometimes when there is nothing to distract you. The world falls away and you just have the reality of the set and it really helps you concentrate and all you do is apply yourself to the film. I remember when I made The Last Temptation of Christ, it was a very demanding role and we shot out in Morocco. It was a very small production, Hollywood and the news felt a million miles away. I would just sleep, wake up, go to work, get home and go to sleep. Your life sort of disappears and feeds the fictional life. It becomes a very powerful thing. The fiction starts to seep into your dreams. There is no separation.
Lars Von Trier said in an interview that one of his phobias, the fear of flying, has been practical because he doesn’t spend months going all around the world for his films. How do you think this affects him as a filmmaker?
He is very smart and very driven. He has all kinds of problems, which he talks about very publicly, but he’s inspired, he pushes things and is still very much playing with the language of film. He has created a situation in Denmark with the people by how he makes and casts his movies and he can sustain it while having a degree of freedom. He is pretty amazing and to work with him is to be off balance. He does everything to conspire to make the actor off balance, but if you trust him, to work with him can be very liberating. I’m interested in working with people who aren’t corrupt, who aren’t stuck, who are challenging themselves and still turned on.
I’ve seen most of your films, I can’t say I’ve seen them all…
I don’t think my mother could say she’s seen them all! (Laughs) I shouldn’t say that because she is dead, of course she hasn’t seen them!
(Laughing) The concept of good and evil and the unknown is often present in your work. Have your roles made you more aware of your surroundings, especially when you’re in foreign territory?
Hmm, like questions of morality?
Morality, trust or judgment.
I think it goes back to what I was talking about before. It’s nice to go to different places and see that people value different things. What they reward and what they punish is sometimes based on cultural differences. It’s interesting to see what is universal and that always brings into question what is learned and what is inherent in people. Are they basically just trying to survive? Are they weak and evil or are they altruistic and do they just want to fulfill a role and be kind? These are all in the mix sometimes when you’re looking at how people treat each other. I think that telling stories and traveling helps you keep on approaching those questions from different angles. I mean they are questions I ask myself all the time. But they are given new life and new dialogue by different experiences.
That reminds me of Ralf Schmerberg’s Table of Free Voices symposium in Berlin, where people from all over the world were encouraged to submit questions pertaining to global dilemmas. Your role as moderator was to ask these questions to a select roundtable of extraordinary people. Did you enjoy that?
Yes it was a wonderful experience. Ralf is quite an incredible guy.
Ralf is so inspired and his work is very much about advocating free thought.
One nice thing about film and one reason I like going to the film festivals and being on a jury is that it’s interesting to see the cultural conditioning and how one man’s meat is another man’s poison. It’s nice to trace back what conditions our way of seeing and if you can recognize those conditions, you can get much more calm and clear about your prejudices and about the things that hold you back from thinking in a free, generous and creative way. That’s what I aspire to because the best thing we can do is help free each other from the pressures of modern living, being human and worrying about the fact that we all know where we’re going and we don’t know when we’re gonna go.
Are you a do it yourself kind of person or do you rely on concierge services when you travel?
Listen, I travel all kinds of ways. With the theatre particularly, we traveled economically and we stayed at very modest places. I like to be comfortable but it comes in all kinds of ways. I don’t need luxury, but I like comfort and when I can’t have it, sometimes that’s good too. Like a bathtub, I love bathtubs. This is when my princess-ness comes out.
(Mr. Dafoe puts his hand to his ear like a phone receiver and pretends to be calling room service)
“Yes, room service, I’d like an espresso. Okay, you don’t have espresso, how about a coffee? Okay I’ll take a coffee with soymilk. Oh, you don’t have soymilk…?” It’s like, if it’s out of their world, it doesn’t exist, you know? And if you ask for it, it’s like, “We do fine without that! You don’t need soymilk, have some milk you idiot.” It gets aggressive.
(Laughing) Did you learn a lot about survival when you trained with a bush survival expert for your role in The Hunter?
I did but I can’t say I’d do better than anyone else surviving out in the bush. But it was a wonderful experience and that guy was very inspirational.
Do your friends count on you for travel advice?
Most of my friends travel as much as I do. You can give tips, but everyone finds their own way and you really never know until you get there. That’s the tricky part, you just don’t know until you get there.
Originally published in issue #5 of The Travel Almanac, 2013
