Willem Dafoe (William James Dafoe)

He was Bill when the Post-Crescent put him in the paper dissecting a dead perch with his father’s surgical kit, and Billy when the Attic needed a thirteen-year-old for A Thousand Clowns.

He was born in Appleton on July 22, 1955, the seventh of eight children in a surgeon’s house near Lawrence University. Father William was the surgeon; mother Muriel the nurse; they worked together, so the five older sisters did much of the raising. A friend got lazy with “William,” and he became Willem. It stuck harder than the birth certificate. Appleton East ended abruptly after he left a communications-class tape on the machine over lunch—a satanist, a nudist, a kid who wanted pot legal. He meant to cut the wild parts. The teacher watched first. He came back from lunch to locked doors and parents already in the principal’s office.

He finished diploma requirements with a Lawrence class, studied drama at UW–Milwaukee for about eighteen months, joined Theatre X, then left for New York and the Wooster Group. Four Oscar nominations followed—Platoon, Shadow of the Vampire, The Florida Project, and At Eternity’s Gate—along with the Green Goblin, van Gogh, and a Walk of Fame star in 2024. The boy in the Attic still photographs better than the goblin.