Willem Dafoe

Born: July 1955
Where: Appleton, Wisconsin, USA

Dafoe's vaguely threatening features have helped him carve out a career as an off kilter character in movies ranging from American Psycho to Spider-Man.

Described as the "pallidly beautiful embodiment of pure evil" at the other extreme he also played Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ.

Before his acting career took off he studied drama at university and joined the experimental theatre group Theatre X in Milwaukee.

(as a student he was banned from making a magazine show featuring a satanist, a drug dealer and a nudist).

In 1977 after a year of touring with the theatre group, he moved to New York to try his hand at the movie business.

His film acting debut came four years later when he starred in The Loveless.

It was Dafoe's performance in To Live and Die on L.A that caught the attention of Oliver Stone, who then cast him in Platoon - a role which won him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination.

In 1990 after appearing in David Lynch's Wild at Heart, he tried his hand at something different, appearing as a model in adverts for Prada.

In 1996 Dafoe starred in the Academy Award-winning Best Picture The English Patient, alongside Ralph Fiennes.

His turn as a detective in American Psycho opposite Christian Bale brought him once again to the spotlight.

At the 2000 Oscar awards he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Shadow of the Vampire.

After returning to the stage with the Wooster Group in North Atlantic, Dafoe accepted a trio of roles wherein he portrayed men of faith.

In Bullfighter, a futuristic retelling of the Mary and Joseph Christmas story, he played a priest and Pavilion of Women saw him cast as a missionary who falls in love with a Chinese woman.

In Edges of the Lord, Dafoe essayed a Catholic priest in Nazi-occupied Poland who sheltered Jewish children.

In 2002, Dafoe played two vastly differening villains: the sneering, schizophrenic Green Goblin in Spider-Man and the sex-addicted pal of sit-com star Bob Crane in Paul Shrader's Auto Focus.

He followed on voicing the mysterious moorish idol fish in Disney/Pixar's Finding Nemo and the leader of a group of travelling players in murder mystery The Reckoning.

In 2004, Dafoe played camp German seaman Klaus Daimler in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and the part of Roland Sweet in Martin Scorcese's The Aviator.

Recent work includes the role of a corrupt US defence secretary in the the sequel xXx2: The Next Level with Ice Cube.