"I strive to have the opinion of no opinion," he says. That he can be convinced of one idea one minute and another the next. He loves the idea that he can be one person one minute and another the next. Buddhism fascinates me for example, though I wouldn't want to be called a Buddhist."ĭafoe doesn't want to be called anything. "But that means you're antagonistic and capable of being a thief and a murderer," I say. "Caravaggio is me and I am him," he replies. "The English Patient is about the coming together of a French-Canadian nurse, an English patient, a Sikh in a turban and me, Caravaggio, and each of us is seeking a resolution to our own problems," he says. "Anyway," he said, clearing his throat, "I just fell in love with the book." He looked at me, laughed and turned scarlet. So precise, so exact, so deeply felt, don't you think?" I wanted to say, yes, yes absolutely, and while we're on the subject. "'His penis,'" he says slowly, "'was like that of a sleeping sea lion.' It was lines like those that got to me the most. He is a man of few words, but when he does talk it is as if he has weighed each one before opening his mouth. "When I finally succumbed - to reading the book, I mean," he says, the mouth again breaking open into a vast smile, "I was taken by the poetry, the smells and touches of the narrative, the setting in Tuscany and the Sahara."Īnd what seduced him most about the story, set in the Second World War, of the English patient and his love affair with Katherine, played by Kristin Scott Thomas? Dafoe deliberates. People were giving each other the book to seduce one another." Understandably, someone gave Dafoe the novel with similar intentions. When Dafoe heard about Michael Ondaatje's novel, The English Patient, he refused to read it for months. Wisconsin-born Dafoe, 41, who has played a string of evil characters, including the criminal who is fornicated to death by Madonna in Body Of Evidence, and the evil Bobby Peru in David Lynch's Wild At Heart, was at the Berlin Film Festival to promote Anthony Minghella's highly acclaimed film, The English Patient. I'm the odd one out, the outsider," he says. "I guess they often cast me as the bad guy, because I'm not, er, conventional looking.
The mouth is so wide, the teeth so oversized, the stare so intense. Then he turns round, holds out his hand and grins and you simply don't know where to look. From behind, he is ordinarily trendy - faded black denims, bright blond hair tied in a pony tail. He is standing with his back to me, staring out of the window over West Berlin at night. Shocking is the word that springs to mind when you meet Willem Dafoe.
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