Remember when you were a kid, and were out with your parents or friends, and you ran into your teacher, like, in public? They were almost unrecognizable outside of school!
A similar feeling is gripping the internet after a video surfaced showing Hollywood heavyweight Willem Dafoe at the tender age of 20.
“How can that be him?” the younger you is desperately wondering.
Highlights
- A video of Willem Dafoe performing a stage play in Wisconsin in 1975 has reignited a fan frenzy over one of Hollywood’s hardest working actors
- Dafoe is seen in the video with the same familiar face, but one particular feature stands out
- Fans are going wild over the young-looking Dafoe, with comments suggesting he go by the name DeFINE
Countdown to brain exploding moment in three, two…
Dafoe’s 20-year-old self, hair lustrous and golden, looks wildly different from how he does today
Image credits: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
Image credits: Sony Pictures
The clip in question is from 1975 at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, 69-year-old Dafoe’s alma mater.
In the video, we see Dafoe performing a court scene in a Theatre X production of “Civil Commitment Hearings.” He was about 20 years old at the time.
His forehead wrinkles are starting to appear and so are his laugh lines. His famously imperfect teeth are there, too.
But one other feature, his shoulder-length honey blond hair, is starkly different from how he currently wears it.
When performing his lines in the scene, his trademark voice and speech mannerisms are present. You know it's Willem Dafoe, but, somehow… you don’t.
Dafoe has worked steadily since the 80’s, making some of Hollywood’s most iconic films
Image credits: UW-Milwaukee
There was a time when Willem, born William in Appleton, Wisconsin, was best known for playing Jesus Christ in Martin Scorsese's controversial film, The Last Temptation of Christ, which came out in 1988.
In films immediately after that, he seemed to play a series of villains.
According to an interview in The Independent, Dafoe “has played a string of evil characters, including in Body Of Evidence starring Madonna, in David Lynch's Wild At Heart, and in The English Patient starring Ralph Fiennes.”
And those movies were all made before the year 2000.
Image credits: UW-Milwaukee
Other readers might recognize Dafoe from later films like Spider-Man with Toby McGuire, when he played the Green Goblin.
Or when he co-starred with Christian Bale in American Psycho. Or when he was in no less than six Wes Anderson films.
According to The Movie Database, Dafoe has appeared in or voiced 245 films or TV shows, with stats showing he has remained a fully working actor, taking parts big and small nearly every year since 1980.
“I’m good with wigs”: Dafoe talks about his hair while filming Aquaman
Image credits: UW-Milwaukee
Even though photos and pictures from the mid-2000s show Dafoe’s hair was longish, people tend to think his look has remained more or less the same over the years.
Dafoe was nominated for his role in 2018’s At Eternity’s Gate, the biographical film about the final years of painter Vincent van Gogh's life.
During an interview with Variety on the red carpet of the Golden Globes awards in 2019, he talked about having to wear a wig for some scenes in another movie he was in that year, the DC Comics film Aquaman, where he played Nuidis Vulko.
When the Variety reporter asked where his Vulko hair was, Dafoe replied: “I’m sure they’ve got it in a studio somewhere. That was a wig. It’s okay, I’m good with wigs. With a good costume and wig, that helps you out.”
“I’m not surprised at all”: Netizens say Dafoe was, and remains, a good-looking guy
Image credits: Atlantic Releasing
There was no shortage of comments from people comparing the young Dafoe to other actors.
Heath Ledger’s name came up often, as did Bill Skarsgård.
For some people who have admired Dafoe for a while, the revelation of the video was just too much to bear.
“He’s on my iPhone notes list of oddly attractive men that I’ve curated for a decade plus. But this. I have never seen him young. Someone quick! Start me a cold shower. I feel faint,” one fan wrote.
Image credits: Chris Jackson/Getty Images
Many people praised the actor as having always been good-looking, and perhaps even more so as an older gentleman.
“I think he’s hot old so I’m not surprised at all,” one person said.
Some comments began by renaming the actor “Willem DaFINE.”
Dafoe’s theatre career is little known but much respected
Image credits: WFAA
Dafoe remains a steady force in Hollywood, but it's his theatre work that has been getting attention as of late.
According to an article in Spain’s El País, Dafoe has co-founded one of the most influential theatre companies, The Wooster Group, which was born in the effervescent New York scene of the 1970s and is still active today.”
“At the Royal Theater in Madrid in 2012, he was in The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic, a powerful operatic production,” the paper reports.
Image credits: Variety
He also recently performed in a show at the annual Venice Biennale, an international cultural exhibition widely regarded as one of Europe’s great avant-garde events.
El País says, “The play he presented in Venice is a love letter to theatrical experimentation as a driving force of artistic innovation, even if it doesn’t attract masses of viewers like Hollywood films.”
Netizens go wild for a 20-year-old Willem Dafoe, with his long, blond hair reminding people of Heath Ledger
