Willem Dafoe has spent much of his career playing people who don't fit in, from troubled outsiders and eccentric visionaries to characters whose understanding of the world challenges everyone around them. After more than four decades in Hollywood, the four-time Oscar nominee has reached a conclusion that might explain both his unconventional career and his latest film, Tenzing.
"I think we need those crazy people. We need those people that don't share the same point of view as others," Dafoe told this reporter in an exclusive interview. "I think it opens our heart and gives us a wider way of looking at life."
For Dafoe, 71, the idea is less about eccentricity than about the courage to question accepted truths, something that connects him to the explorers at the center of Tenzing, AppleTV's historical drama about the first confirmed ascent of Mount Everest.
The film, starring Tom Hiddleston as Edmund Hillary and Genden Phuntsok as Tenzing Norgay, follows the extraordinary 1953 expedition that brought the New Zealand mountaineer and his Sherpa partner to the summit of the world's highest mountain.
Dafoe portrays John Hunt, the British Army officer who led the expedition, a man whose military discipline and practical approach to leadership are gradually challenged by an experience that cannot be understood through orders and logistics alone.
The actor sees a connection between people willing to risk their lives exploring the unknown and artists who continually push themselves beyond familiar territory. "I think you have to have some kind of curiosity and you have to have some kind of a desire for a challenge, to push you to some understanding of why you're here, give meaning to your life, find contact with what is important," he said.
For Dafoe, the similarities go beyond professional ambition. Both actors and explorers must be willing to confront their limitations and discover something about themselves in the process.
That willingness to challenge established ways of thinking also lies at the heart of director Jennifer Peedom's approach to Tenzing.
The Australian filmmaker, whose previous documentaries include Sherpa and Mountain, wanted to revisit an achievement that had traditionally been told through the language of conquest. In her film, reaching Everest's summit is not simply a matter of defeating nature. It also requires understanding the people who consider the mountain sacred.
"There's a different kind of hero," Peedom told me in a separate interview. "There's a different way to achieve your dreams. And it doesn't need to be about conquering. It can be about approaching a goal with reverence and respect."
The distinction is central to the relationship between the film's characters. Hillary approaches Everest with remarkable determination, while Tenzing, whose Buddhist beliefs shape his connection to the Himalayas, sees the mountain as a sacred presence rather than an adversary.
Hunt, meanwhile, must navigate those different perspectives while keeping a dangerous expedition organized.
Dafoe said he was particularly conscious of his character's emotional transformation, although he approached the performance through the practical responsibilities of commanding the team. "A lot of his dealings are practical. He's telling people what has to happen. He's directing them," the actor explained. "I'm not thinking so much about his character. It's how I'm positioned in the group of people that really gives him that position."
One moment near the end of the film, when Hunt takes out a blessing and reads it, captures the change in his outlook.
"It's a beautiful way to experience that change," Dafoe said. "It's a concrete way to express a shift of understanding."
That shift reflects something the actor has spent much of his career exploring: what happens when people allow themselves to question their assumptions. From his Oscar-nominated performance as Jesus in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ to his portrayal of the troubled artist Vincent van Gogh in At Eternity's Gate, Dafoe has repeatedly gravitated toward characters whose experiences place them outside conventional society.
His career has also moved comfortably between blockbuster franchises, including Spider-Man, and unconventional independent films such as The Lighthouse and Poor Things.
For Dafoe, the appeal of unconventional characters is closely connected to his belief that people need to remain receptive to unfamiliar perspectives.
"I want to know how other people see the world because it can make me see things beyond my experience," he said. "Then I can kind of play around with that. I can imagine another way of being, another way of living."
He worries that the pressure to conform can gradually narrow that ability. "The second that you lose flexibility and you get too many rules and you have too much pressure to conform," he said, people risk becoming trapped by their own assumptions.
"If we get too stuck in our likes and dislikes and too rigid in our acceptance of cultural conditioning, then I think we die a little bit."
It's a philosophy that also helps explain why Dafoe continues taking creative risks decades into a career that has brought him international recognition without tying him to a single kind of role. He believes encountering people with radically different experiences can expose the limitations of our own thinking.
"We always have to reach outside of our experience to others to find the blind spots we have about how we live our life and how we see others and what we aspire to," he added.
The conversation eventually turned to Dafoe's life away from film sets. The actor spends part of his time in the Italian countryside with his wife, filmmaker Giada Colagrande, where they keep animals, including alpacas.
When talking about that unusual household, Dafoe found another example of the importance of seeing the world differently. "Animals also have a different point of view," he said. "And we learn a lot from them."
Even that seemingly playful observation connects to the ideas that attracted him to Tenzing: curiosity, humility and the possibility that understanding something unfamiliar can change how we understand ourselves..
Tenzing opened in select theaters October 9 and premieres globally on Apple TV on Friday, October 16.
© {{Year}} Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.