Willem Dafoe is one of film's most recognizable contemporary actors. He's appeared in several movies and is often remembered for his spirited performances. MCU fans know Dafoe best from his performance as Green Goblin in the first few Spider-Man movies from the early 2000s.
Some fans might say Dafoe's appearance helps make 2002's Spider-Man one of the best movies featuring the character. However, Dafoe has played a villain in many films. In some movies like Wild At Heart, his position as a villain is rather straightforward. In other movies like The Lighthouse, he is more of an abstract antagonist. Dafoe's villainous roles make for some of his most interesting performances.
Bobby Peru
Director David Lynch gave audiences one of his best movies with Wild At Heart. Nic Cage and Laura Dern star in the romantic thriller dripping with Americana. Willem Dafoe gives a memorable performance as Bobby Peru, one of the film's main villains. Peru is meant to help Cage's Sailor rob a bank, but he ends up turning on him after nearly attacking Dern's Lula in one of the movie's most unsettling sequences.
Bobby Peru seems to embody the villainous. His look is hard to forget, from his greasy hair to his pencil mustache. Perhaps Peru's most memorable attribute is his tiny yellow teeth. Dafoe elaborates on Peru's eerie look with a creepy performance when he frightens Lula. He becomes fully terrifying after pressing his face with a pantyhose before the robbery when audiences learn he is even deadlier than he initially appears.
Gas
Willem Dafoe plays a small role as Gas in director David Cronenberg's eXistenZ. He is one of the film's undeniable villains. The film follows Jude Law's Ted Pikul as he navigates an immersive virtual reality game and evades a movement that believes the game should be stamped out. When he decides to have a "port" installed in his spine so he can play the game, Ted meets Gas.
Dafoe gives audiences a greasy creep with Gas. Like some of his other villainous roles, he gains the skeptical trust of the protagonists upon his first appearance. However, he turns on Ted when he installs a faulty port and tries to kill the game creator Allegra Geller who is with him. Cronenberg is an expert at making audiences uncomfortable, and Dafoe enriches his abilities. Gas helps make eXistenZ one of Cronenberg's scariest movies.
Max Schreck
Shadow Of A Vampire tells a fictional tale about the real classic horror movie Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror. The story follows the filming of the movie in Czechoslovakia. John Malkovich plays the director, F.W. Murnau, and Willem Dafoe plays the star Max Schreck who plays the titular vampire. However, the film presents the idea that Schreck himself is a vampire, and his murderous appetite must be stopped by Murnau.
Schreck is perhaps Dafoe's most horrifying villain. His sharp fangs and devilish grin have a lasting impression on fans of the movie. His razor-sharp fangs and insatiable thirst for blood cause the suffering of several of the film's characters. Dafoe seems to embody the otherworldly creature he plays, resulting in one of his most chilling performances.
Donald Kimball
It's hard to say American Psycho isn't a modern cult classic. The Christian Bale-starring film brings to life the story of Patrick Bateman, a wealthy New Yorker with a penchant for murder. The movie places Dafoe in the role of antagonist, but a different kind of villain than most of his other adversary roles.
Patrick Bateman is an anti-hero, but the murderous investment banker is the undeniable main character in the film. As such, those who try to stop his behavior act as villains. Willem Dafoe plays Detective Donald Kimball, a cop investigating the murders of one of Bateman's victims. Kimball is intimidating, duplicitous, and threatening thanks to Dafoe's performance.
Thomas Wake
The Lighthouse presents Willem Dafoe as a unique villain. The movie showcases the story of two lighthouse keepers played by Dafoe and Robert Pattinson. Dafoe's Thomas Wake is the veteran keeper who takes in Pattinson's Ephraim Winslow/Thomas Howard when he needs employment. Lines of reality blur as the two spend weeks of isolated work on the "rock," which falls victim to a massive storm.
Some fans might say madness or mother nature is the true villain in The Lighthouse. However, Winslow/Howard is the protagonist in the movie, and Dafoe's Wake torments him throughout. He is filthy, mean, and has little sympathy for Pattinson's character. Fans of the film will remember Wake's threatening monologue highlighting his terrifying persona. Furthermore, the two characters are polarized when they come to blows at the end of the film.
FBI Special Agent Paul Smecker
The Boondock Saints features several memorable performances, and the movie is known by fans as a modern cult classic. It tells the tale of two vigilantes in Boston and the FBI Agent who goes after them. Sean Patrick Flanery and Norman Reedus play the vigilantes Connor and Murphy MacManus respectively, and Willem Dafoe plays FBI Special Agent Paul Smecker who investigates the murders of their victims.
It's hard to argue that Smecker isn't one of Dafoe's most eccentric performances. Smecker is a confident leader and lets anyone who challenges him know it. He makes snarky remarks to his crew as they perform their investigation. Furthermore, he has several one-liners in his attempt to take down the MacManus brothers. Dafoe steals nearly every scene in which he appears, and his angry outbursts remind audiences of his position as a villain, despite going after murderers.
Green Goblin
Spider-Man's Norman Osborn is now one of Willem Dafoe's most iconic roles. He is most prominently featured in the first installment of the Tobey Maguire-starring trilogy. As Peter Parker's origin story unfolds, Osborn is working on an experiment gone terribly wrong. He becomes unhinged and homicidal after taking experimental chemicals. It's not long before he goes after Parker as the movie's main villain, known as Green Goblin after the Daily Bugle covers his path of destruction. Fans remember Dafoe's Osborn thanks to his varied performance.
He keeps his cool as an overly-confident father to Parker's best friend Harry Osborn in the film's beginning. After he transforms into the Green Goblin, audiences see Dafoe's prowess as a villain. He contorts his face with wild screams and seems to embody a true ghoul, like during his first kill in the lab and when he attacks Aunt May. Furthermore, he chills audiences when he falsely pleads to Parker during the film's finale, only to drop his face saying "God's speed, Spider-Man," in his final ambush.