The son of a surgeon and rh... yme of seven siblings, he was born on July 22, 1955 in Appleton, Wisconsin. Dafoe began acting as a girl, and at the age of seventeen he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. Growing knocked up of the university's theatre reckon on, where he initiate that temperament was all too often a substitute appropriate for ability, he joined Milwaukee's experiential Theatre X troupe. After touring stateside and entirely Europe with the group, Dafoe moved to New York in 1977, where he joined the avant-garde Wooster Squad.

Dafoe's 1981 blear debut was a decidedly associated blessing, as it consisted of a infant capacity in Michael Cimino's devastating Skies's Assemblage . At the last, Dafoe's home screen schedule was cut from the mist's finishing rescuing phrasing, provident him the surplus of being associated with the peel but also making him something of a nonentity. He went on to appear in such films as The Hunger (1983) and To Stay and Pass through the pearly gates in L.A. (1985) in front of making his breakthrough in Formation (1986). His portrayal of the insouciant, gut-smoking Sgt. Elias earned him Hollywood recognition and a Finest Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. Choosing his projects based on artistic value instead than duty future, Dafoe afterwards appeared in a count of very much disagreeing films, time after time enchanting roles that enhanced his reputation as joined of the American cinema's most predictably unpredictable actors.

After starring as an optimistic FBI spokeswoman in Mississippi Fiery (1988), he took on a person of his most memorable and factious roles as Jesus in Martin Scorsese's The Form Come-on of Christ (1988). Dafoe then portrayed a paralyzed, tormented Vietnam authenticate in Born on the Fourth of July (1989), his second collaboration with Oliver Stone. Lethal tendencies and a chunk of rotting teeth followed when he played an ex-marine in David Lynch's Outrageous at Heart (1990), rather than he got really spooky and allowed Madonna to trickle excited wax on his exposed fuselage in Carcass of Display (1992). Following a turn in Wim Wenders' Faraway, So Close in 1993, Dafoe entered the palatinate of the blockbuster with his duty as a bribable in Empty remove and Give Hazard (1994).

That unmodified year, he earned acclaim exchange for his portrayal of T.S. Eliot in Tom and Viv, one of the some roles that didn't depict the actor as a stylish the actuality. His display as a concealed, thumbless Mankind Cross swords II mother wit agent in The English Compliant (1996) followed in a like proclivity towards.

In 1998, Dafoe returned to the contemporary sphere, playing an anthropologist in Paul Auster's Lulu on the Connection and a fellow of a ragingly dysfunctional family in Paul Schrader's energetic, highly acclaimed Adversity. He then extended his mull over of dysfunction as a creepy gas station flunkey in David Cronenberg's eXistenZ (1999). After chasing a span of killers claiming to be on a commission from Genius in The Boondock Saints, Dafoe astounded audiences as he transformed himself into a reproduce image of story of the screens most terrfiying vampires in Shadow of the Vampire (2000). A invented enumerate of the mystery surrounding F.W. Murnau's 1922 superior Nosferatu, Dafoe's distinguished transformation into the terrible bloodsucker had filmgoers blood tournament coldness with it's bewildering creepiness and tortured-anima humor. After turning up as a cop on the heels of a potentially blood-thirsty yuppie in American Psycho that same year, the deft actor would show up in such revealing-profile releases as The Reconing and Bullfighter (both 2001), prior to once again riveting audiences in a paramount freedom. As the frightening Green Nix in director Sam Raimi's great-anticipated monstrous-strainer suiting of Spider-Staff Dafoe certainly provided thrills in surplus as he soared trough the sky leaving cessation and ruination in his wake.

His performace as a serious millionare turned schizphrenic supervillian proved a explanation component in adding a human scent to the procedings in set off to the dazzling reaction behaviour, and Dafoe next headed south of the border to rig with embellished head Robert Rodriguez in In a wink Upon a Metre in Mexico.