Nevertheless, overlooking Willem Dafoe's terrifying and haunting protrayal of Max Schreck as vampire would be cause for criminal prosecution of neglect.
Born in Wisconsin in 1955, Dafoe is known for his uncanny ability to add multiple dimensions to any role he takes on, and his Schreck is no exception. At first, he seems no more than a greedy predator, willing to follow Murnau's orders in exchange for free dining. His discovery that he likes being a movie star is both funny and frightening, and one can almost empathize with him when he talks about his "life" with Murnau's producer and cameraman. At least, until the moment he snatches a bat out of the night air and does an Ozzy Osborne on it.
Dafoe's first acting role, not surprisingly, got him suspended in high school--it was a "soft porn" video in which he did takes on several local "celebrities." He spent some time in the University of Wisconsin drama department but left there to pursue on-the-job training with Milwaukee's Theatre X.
In 1977, believing he had a role in an upcoming production of Manhattan's Performance Group, he arrived to discover the director who had hired him had been replaced and the role given to another by the group's artistic director, Elizabeth Lecompte. Supposedly, she ordered Dafoe thrown out of the theater when he turned up. She eventually changed her mind, in more ways than one--the couple have a son named Jack.
After a theatrical career in which he pursued the kind of parts that have since become his signature, Dafoe made his wide-screen debut in, unfortunately, Heaven's Gate. That might have ended his movie career in one fell swoop, but his next role, as a poet-biker in The Loveless made up for it. Soon thereafter he took on two roles that truly established him as a talent to be sought for: the savagely twisted counterfeiter in To Live and Die in L.A. and Sergeant Elias in Platoon.
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