MY LIFE IN 10 Pictures

GROWING UP in Appleton, Wisconsin, as one of eight children, William James Dafoe was looking to stand out - especially since he was named after his dad.

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“I love the guy, but you know, I don’t want to be Billy. I don’t want to be William Jr.,” he shared on Today. “You want your own identity.” Of course, after heading to NYC at 22 and hitting the stage, he'd eventually go on to really make a name for himself as one of Hollywood’s best character actors - moving easily from To Live and Die in L.A. and Wild at Heart to racking up Oscar nods for Platoon, Shadow of the Vampire, The Florida Project and At Eternity’s Gate. And as Willem turns 70 on July 22, he can safely say, as he did to The Guardian, “I’m never bored. In fact, it’s probably the greatest feature of getting older,” shared Willem, who also celebrated a 20th anniversary with wife Giada in March. “When I was younger, I was bored and restless a lot. [Now] I always have things I want to do and there aren’t enough hours in the day. It’s only come as I’ve gotten older. It’s a good trade-off, I'd say.”

1 1986 AT ATTENTION "It changed a certain amount of recognition and gave me a different status for a while, but it also brought some problems," he confessed of Platoon, which earned him the first of his four Oscar nominations. "[Afterwards] it was very hard to find good roles. You get everything offered to you, and nothing seems right. And you get somehow overwhelmed."