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Willem Dafoe, born William J. Dafoe (July 22, 1955 in Appleton, Wisconsin) is an Academy Award-nominated and Saturn Award-winning American film actor. Dafoe is a familiar face to genre fans having played the villain in the first two Spider-Man films. Dafoe has made several other genre contributions and earned Oscar nominations for his role in Shadow of the Vampire and the war film Platoon.
Dafoe is one of seven children born to a Wisconsin surgeon. He became interested in acting as a teen and studied theater at the University of Wisconsin. He joined an experimental theatre troupe in Milwaukee and toured the US and Europe before moving to New York where he joined the Wooster Group.
Dafoe was fired from his film debut, a minor role in Heaven's Gate, and his work was cut from the film. His firing proved a blessing in disguise, as the movie proved a critical disaster. He made his genre debut in 1983's The Hunger and made a rare television appearance, guest starring on The Hitchhiker. In 1986, his performance in the Oliver Stone war drama, Platoon earned him his first Oscar Nomination. He followed up with roles in The Last Temptation of Christ as Jesus, Mississippi Burning alongside Gene Hackman, Born on the Fourth of July with Tom Cruise and Cry-Baby with Johnny Depp. Dafoe continued to turn in brilliant performances in noteworthy films including the biopic, Basquiat, The award-winning The English Patient, and his return to genre film, eXistenZ. Other genre appearances include Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, Control
Spider-Man 3, Daybreakers , the WWII drama, Adama Resurrected and The Dust of Time alongside Harvey Keitel.
In 2008, Dafoe signed on to appear in Cirque du Freak, a horror fantasy film directed by Paul Weitz. Dafoe stars in the film alongside ken Watanabe and Salma Hayek.
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