For an actor who's appeared in blockbuster franchises and earned decades of critical acclaim (He just earned his fourth Golden Globe nomination), Willem Dafoe remains something of an industry anomaly. He's starred in controversial features like "The Last Temptation of Christ" and "Antichrist;" he's been an animated fish in "Finding Nemo," a motel manager in "The Florida Project" and Vincent Van Gogh in "At Eternity's Gate." And now, in "Poor Things" – Yorgos Lanthimos' follow-up to "The Favourite" – he's an inquisitive Victorian physician whose young charge, Bella (Emma Stone), is also his latest experiment.
"Performing is still kind of mysterious to me," Dafoe told me during a recent "Salon Talks" interview, "and I never tire of it. It's always different." During our conversation, Dafoe reflected on how he's managed to avoid being typecast after all this time, why he's not interested in going behind the camera, the movies his fans most want to talk to him about and his unique trajectory. "I don't have this master plan or I don't have specific career aspirations," he said. "I've just kind of bumped along and gone from project to project, and always looking for good people, and doing stuff that turned me on."
