Willem Dafoe: "The United States has forgotten the lessons of the Vietnam War"

BarcelonaWillem Dafoe (Appleton, 1955), the star guest of the BCN Film Fest edition that kicks off this Thursday at Cines Verdi, attends to the group of journalists with a warm smile that illuminates his angular and expressive face, one of the most fascinating in world cinema. The Host, the film by Miguel Ángel Jiménez that he is presenting at the festival, is a Catalan co-production with an international cast and filmed in Greece in which the American actor plays a powerful Greek magnate with shady dealings who, in the mid-70s, gathers family and friends on his private island to lavishly celebrate his daughter's anniversary and plan her future, whether she wants it or not. “The problem with wanting to control everything is that it ends up destroying everything you love –the actor points out–. He always thinks about his past, surely because he has humble origins. But what defines him is, above all, power and the loss of his son”.

The character he plays in The Host is obsessed with legacy. And you? Do you think about the legacy you will leave as an actor?

— No, I don't care about my legacy nor do I want to think about it. I'll be very honest with you: when I think about the films I've made, I sometimes wonder how I managed it. It seems impossible. And it's not false modesty. But I want to keep working for many years, so I keep looking for problems and challenges. I don't have time to think about the future and I have no interest in contemplating the past.

The tycoon has dirty dealings in the Sahara in collusion with Francoist elites. Nowadays we have leaders who could be a source of inspiration to shape this character.

— Yes, I keep them very much in mind. But there's no need to look for references. That is to say, the character is clearly based on a self-made Greek tycoon in the style of Aristotle Onassis. But it's just a connection to reality, I was never inspired by Onassis, it wouldn't have worked out for me. Nowadays you can watch a movie and think: "I'm fed up with the rich, they make me sick." But you know what? We have to be smarter than the rich. The rich and powerful are the ones who rule our world. Perhaps they always have, but now we perceive it more intensely. There is a kind of brotherhood of immensely rich people who have become interested in politics. The style guide perhaps started with Silvio Berlusconi, who knows? "This guy is a successful businessman, let's have him govern us!" Bad idea. We need moral leaders.

Of all the movies she has participated in, which one do you feel represents her the most?

— I always think about a movie that you might not know, Hard Rain (1992), by Paul Schrader. I wasn't that guy, but I was his age, I lived in New York, and I felt close in the sense that, if my life had been different, I could have been him. Does that make it a more important role than others? Not necessarily. But I think about it. In any case, what matters about the movies I've made is not that they represent me. I don't care, I'm not important. When we talk about work, what I want is to forget myself. I want to inhabit other people's worlds and think about other ways of being. That doesn't mean I end up living there. But my desire to do so is what I can offer. Sometimes you make simple movies, sometimes important movies. Often you just make movies that are entertainment. You have to have a varied diet.

Susan Sarandon, with whom she precisely worked on Possibilitat d’escapar, said a few months ago in Barcelona that it is increasingly difficult to make political cinema, and that in reality Hollywood has never been political. What do you think?

— I don't know, because I've never made a movie to express an opinion. I make a movie to create a world and inhabit it. Perhaps directors make movies to express opinions, but it's not my job. So I voluntarily ignore certain points of view. To be on the character's side, you have to know their experience and not stray from it. That's why sometimes you don't read the book that the movie you're making adapts, so as not to step outside the framework in which you work. The worst thing you can do is point out things that are not in the movie. And that often happens with the messages of movies.

This year marks forty years since Platoon, the film that made him known to the general public and that recalled an unjust and cruel war. However, the anniversary arrives with the United States entangled once again in unjust and cruel wars.

— I'll tell you something about what's happening now. The United States has forgotten the lessons of the Vietnam War. They've also forgotten other wars, but Vietnam in particular. No one mentions the Vietnam War in the United States, neither in newspapers nor on television. They talk about Iraq, about Afghanistan... They are different regions, of course, but it's the same situation: one country imposing its will on another. And the most surprising thing of all is that now we are allies. Millions of people died in the war and the Vietnamese have forgiven us. They don't spit on American tourists who go on vacation. It has always been this way, we forget too easily.

As I said before, his diet is very varied. He has been Jesus Christ, Van Gogh, Nosferatu, the Green Goblin... How has he managed to interpret such different characters?

— Because nobody notices. I'm invisible. I'm kidding, but it's a bit true. For over thirty years I worked with a theater group, the Wooster Group, a small avant-garde company. Over time it has become known, but at first we were nobody. And when I was ten years old I started making movies. And I swear to God that the audience for my films knew nothing about the Wooster Group, but the audience of the Wooster Group didn't know I made movies. I guess my choices are so eclectic that Spiderman fans know nothing about the movies I make with Abel Ferrara, and Yorgos Lanthimos fans don't know the movies I've made with Walter Hill. So nobody pigeonholes me or tells me "You have to do this" or "Don't do this other thing."

Speaking of theater, since 2025 you have directed the theater department of the Venice Biennale and a few weeks ago, during Theater Day, a message written by you was read in all the theaters that were celebrating it. Do you consider yourself a theater actor who makes movies?

— I consider myself simply an actor.