'Theatre puts feet to the fire'

Willem Dafoe is a gripping screen presence - but lives for the thrill of the stage. As he takes over the Venice theatre biennale, the star lets us know what to expect

- By Ryan Gilbey

Sitting in his house in Rome, an overstuffed bookcase and a distressed wooden door behind him, Willem Dafoe scrunches his hair as though kneading the thoughts in his head.

The 69-year-old, Wisconsin-born actor could pass today for any genial, bristle-moustached handyman in checked shirt and horn-rimmed specs. But it’s that hand that is the giveaway: it keeps scrunching as he talks until the hair is standing in jagged forks. As a visualisation of what is happening in his brain, it is second to none.

We are speaking in April on the anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth (and death), which feels apt given that it is Dafoe’s two-year appointment as artistic director of the international theatre festival at the Venice Biennale that has occasioned our video call. He looks sheepish when I point out the significance of the date, then reverts to his usual wolfish expression. “Ah, Shakespeare doesn’t care,” he says with a wave of the hand. Dafoe has never had much of a relationship with those plays. “There’s a lot of pointing and indicating when people perform them. A lot of leading the audience. Those are things I don’t think are very vital. But it’s such beautiful writing, and I’ve become interested in doing Shakespeare in my dotage.” Could there be a Lear on the horizon? “Why not?” he says with a goofy wobble of the head.