Why Willem Dafoe Likes To Play Characters Who Die

If you’ve ever seen Willem Dafoe in a movie, chances are you’ve watched him die. He’s been stabbed, shot, blown up, crucified, burned alive, and, in one memorable instance, impaled by his own goblin-themed glider. (In another especially memorable scene, he was even buried alive and then axe-murdered.) “Name a movie: I’m dead!” Dafoe once joked. Asked to explain his curious habit of dying, he quipped, “They just always wanna kill me!”

Dafoe certainly has a particular talent for dying. His demise in a hail of bullets in “Platoon” created such a striking image that it became the movie’s poster. But while his mastery of death scenes might tempt directors to cast him as characters who die dramatically, Dafoe himself has also admitted that he’s drawn to such roles. 

In a recent interview with Empire magazine, Dafoe was asked about Robert Eggers 2022 film “The Northman,” in which he plays a jester who is killed (off-screen) early on yet continues to act as a spiritual guide to the protagonist in his new existence as a decapitated, mummified head. Dafoe described his character’s life after death as “beautiful” and admitted that it was “part of the enticement” to the movie: 

“I mean, I knew that there was going to be that little head and… you know, it’s nice to have a good entrance and a good exit.”

Dying certainly makes for an effective and dramatic goodbye, whether it’s from a movie or from a particularly boring party. But there’s more to Dafoe’s love of fictional deaths than wanting to go out in style.

Movies are a way for audiences to experience the thrill of adventure, the terror of horror, and the grief of tragedy without actually putting their own lives in peril. For actors, they have a similar appeal. When asked why he likes playing characters who die so much, Dafoe told Empire that “it raises the stakes.” He added:

“Everyone, unless they’re asleep, has an imagination about their death. So when you’re in a little fiction, getting to play out this kind of fantasy of imagining a version of what could happen to you, even in these extreme cases, something about that experience is elevated. It’s not normal. It’s very specific and it’s personal, but it’s not you, because the circumstances are not of your life.”

While no living person knows what it feels like to die (at least, not permanently), the fear of dying is hard-wired into us, and it’s a very accessible emotion for actors like Dafoe to tap into. Death itself is inevitable, and Dafoe sees death scenes in movies as a kind of rehearsal for the real thing and a way of confronting the fear of our own mortality. “To enact [one’s death], even without any real risk or any real reality, is a beautiful exercise,” he explained. “I’m sure somewhere there are some rituals in various cultures where it’s done to help people prepare for their death.”

Empire interviewer Alex Godfrey later quoted a 1987 interview in which Dafoe said: “A performance is like a life that I flail angrily through until it’s over.” Asked if he still feels that way, the actor replied, “Sometimes I do […] I’m a different person now, but that sounds okay. I don’t mind being tagged by that.”