There’s something very intimidating about Willem Dafoe, and that intimidation increases tenfold when he sits down right next to you. After a brief chat about his upcoming film Daybreakers the uneasiness didn’t fade, but I was able to pinpoint its source. When Dafoe takes on a role, there isn’t an ounce of him that isn’t fully committed to becoming the character.

In the case of Daybreakers, that character is Elvis, one of few remaining humans in a world filled with vampires. Why would a star as renowned as Dafoe take a chance on a brother writing/directing team with just one extremely low budget film on their resume? Because it isn’t about the scale of the film to him, it’s about the quality of the content.

Read on to see what Dafoe had to say about his role in the movie, his career overall and his hopes for the future.

What was your initial reaction when you received this script?
When I first read the script I thought the part would really be fun. I always am looking to do action. 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. They want me to be the guy in the suit as opposed to the guy running around blowing stuff up or whatever. But I like doing that stuff! It’s sort of fun. I like the athleticism of it. There were lots of pleasures in the script and the character and then also the Spierigs. You always take a risk when you work with people who don’t have a huge body of work, but I liked how they talked about [the script] and also I couldn’t resist this going to Australia to work with two identical twin brothers! [Laughs]

You had about six or seven films come out this year. When do you sleep?
Yeah, but some of them were little things. Little things for me, to be fair. We shot [Daybreakers] a long time ago. The post on it was very long, and I think also they were really trying to be savvy about where to place it and this consciousness of vampire movies. They didn’t want to get too close to these other movies. I used to have much more steady obligations to my theater company, but I stopped working there six years ago and only recently have started working in the theater again.

How did the violent scenes in this movie compare to those in Antichrist? Did they affect you differently?
Yes! [Laughs] Because violence isn’t being done to me. No, not just that. It enters into the movie; it’s more assigned here, it’s more the language of horror and genre where that is more psychologically based. It also uses horror language but it takes it - where it comes from is from a very deep dark psychological place, this is more film language. This is clearly more a movie movie than that one is. So, how does it affect me? That violence comes from pain and from guilt and from humiliation. This violence comes from a kind of game. It feels very different.


What about being directed by Lars von Trier as opposed to these young brothers?
Wow! You’re really giving me a workout here! [Laughs] They’re so very different. In order to make sense of that, to really answer that question I’ve got to define the differences so much that we’d be here all day. But they’re both good! That’s the pleasure of being an actor, you can enjoy both of those situations. They do different things for you and that’s part of the pleasure.

What was the most challenging thing about making this film? Was it the budget? Was it the special effects?
I think it was finding the right tone. Often that’s the truth; it’s about how to enter the world and how to serve the world and find that balance. How goofy should it be? How funny? How conscious of itself? How much did you want to lose yourself in it? Those are calibrations that are sometimes hard to find because the reality of it is hard to relate to, because it doesn’t remind you much of anything in your life it’s so fantastical and extreme. So how you estimate relating a reality in a world like this is the tricky part, always.

Do you only find those calibrations once you’re on the set?
Yeah. I think you should probably prepare and have some stuff up your sleeve and you should have some expectation so you can just get yourself going and you do that in preparing and making choices about how you look, accents, whatever, physical ways of being, your props, all that stuff. That’s where it starts. And you start to form an idea, an expectation but, at the same time, once you get there you have to be willing to let that go immediately.

What would you like to do more?
I’d like to do more theater but there’s only a certain kind of theater that I want to do. I just did a play that I really enjoyed doing, a theater performance that I really enjoyed doing and is, I think, quite successful. Sometimes I see directors that I really admire and I’d like to work with them. I look at someone like Ang Lee. I think he makes some beautiful movies. I see something like Lust, Caution and I say this is beautiful, incredible. I’ll play a spear-carrier just, you know, something like this, just to be around this. This is a beautiful thing. And the truth is, there’s not even a role for a spear-carrier for a guy like me in that movie. 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.

Would you do another Daybreakers?
Yeah, I had a good time and I like these guys. I don’t know that that’s in the cards, but, you know, it depends what else is going on and lots of things. But I like these guys and I think this movie is fun and has a good sense of itself. I’ve only seen it once, but I’ll probably see it again, but I like it.


You’ve worked with so many different directors. What type of directing style brings the best out of you?
It don’t work that way! Each time it’s different, and with each project a different performance is necessary. There’s many different ways of performing and some obviously you have tendencies to be better at than others, some you have to learn, some you do naturally. It’s all such a mixture of all these things so that’s really hard to say. I can say, and clearly I seek them out, I get most excited by personal filmmakers, filmmakers that – as close as we have to auteurs, which there are very few of.

What’s your take on all of the new technology that allows you to play, let’s say a 10-foot alien warrior in John Carter of Mars and fit into all of these roles that physically you never could?
There aren’t that many movies that do that. That takes money and there’s only so many big movies. I’m glad to be a part of one of them. I’m mixed on it.

Is it a new frontier of acting?
I suppose. I suppose. But as you noted it’s all pretending and it’s about directing your brain and your body to certain tasks and having something happen and it’s all about receptivity and it’s all about flexibility and it’s all about pretending and making things so I can’t get too fussy about making decisions. I have bigger worries than that.