Age: 70
male
William James "Willem" Dafoe (born July 22, 1955) is an American actor. Known for his prolific career portraying diverse roles in both mainstream and arthouse films, he is the recipient of various accolades, including the Volpi Cup for Best Actor as well as nominations for four Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, four Golden Globe Awards, four Critics' Choice Movie Awards, and five Screen Actors Guild Awards. He has frequently collaborated with filmmakers Paul Schrader, Abel Ferrara, Lars von Trier, Julian Schnabel, Wes Anderson, and Robert Eggers. Dafoe was a founding member of experimental theatre company The Wooster Group. He made his film debut with an uncredited role in Heaven's Gate (1980). Dafoe's early career includes credits for The Loveless (1982), Streets of Fire (1984), and To Live and Die in L.A. (1985). He earned his first Academy Award nomination for the war drama Platoon (1986), followed by nominations for his roles in Shadow of the Vampire (2000), The Florida Project (2017), and the Vincent van Gogh biopic At Eternity's Gate (2018). He also gained acclaim and wide recognition for his roles as Jesus Christ in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and as the supervillain Norman Osborn in the superhero film Spider-Man (2002), a role he reprised in its sequels Spider-Man 2 (2004) and Spider-Man 3 (2007), and the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021). His other film appearance include roles in Mississippi Burning (1988), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Wild at Heart (1990), Light Sleeper (1992), Body of Evidence (1993), Clear and Present Danger (1994), The English Patient (1996), Affliction (1997), New Rose Hotel(1998), Existenz (1999), The Boondock Saints (1999), American Psycho (2000), Auto Focus (2002), Finding Nemo (2003), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), Inside Man (2006), Mr. Bean's Holiday (2007), Antichrist (2009), Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), Nymphomaniac (2013), The Fault in Our Stars (2014), John Wick (2014), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Aquaman (2018), The Lighthouse (2019), Nightmare Alley (2021), Poor Things (2023), and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024).
The narrator, Francis Wayland Thurston, recounts his discovery of notes left behind by his grand-uncle, Brown University linguistic professor George Gammell Angell, after his death in the winter of 1926–27. Among the notes is a small bas-relief sculpture of a scaly creature which yields "simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature." The sculptor, a Rhode Island art student named Henry Anthony Wilcox, based the work on delirious dreams of "great Cyclopean cities of titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths." Frequent references to Cthulhu and R'lyeh are found in Wilcox's papers. Angell also discovers reports of mass hysteria around the world. More notes discuss a 1908 meeting of an archeological society in which New Orleans police official John Raymond Legrasse asks attendees to identify a statuette of unidentifiable greenish-black stone resembling Wilcox's sculpture. It is then revealed that the previous year, Legrasse and a party of policemen found several women and children being used in a ritual by an all-male cult. After killing five of the cultists and arresting 47 others, Legrasse learns that they worship the "Great Old Ones" and await the return of a monstrous being called Cthulhu.[2] The prisoners identify the statuette as "great Cthulhu." One of the academics present at the meeting, Princeton professor William Channing Webb, describes a group of "Esquimaux" with similar beliefs and fetishes. Thurston discovers a 1925 article from an Australian newspaper which reports the discovery of a derelict ship, the Emma, of which second mate Gustaf Johansen is the sole survivor. Johansen reports that the Emma was attacked by a heavily armed yacht named the Alert. The crewmen of the Emma killed those aboard the Alert, but lost their own ship in the battle, commandeered the Alert, and discovered an uncharted island in the vicinity of co-ordinates of 47°9′S 126°43′W. With the exception of Johansen and another man, the remaining crew died on the island. Johansen does not reveal the manner of their death. Upon traveling to Australia, Thurston views a statue retrieved from the Alert which is identical to the previous two. In Norway, he learns that Johansen died suddenly after an encounter with "two Lascar sailors". Johansen's widow provides Thurston with her late husband's manuscript, wherein the uncharted island is described as being home to a "nightmare corpse-city" called R'lyeh. Johansen's crew struggled to comprehend the non-Euclidean geometry of the city and accidentally release Cthulhu, resulting in their deaths. Johansen and one crew-mate flee aboard the Alert and are pursued by Cthulhu. Johansen rams the yacht into the creature's head, only for its injury to regenerate. The Alert escapes, but Johansen's crewmate dies. After finishing the manuscript, Thurston realizes he is now a target of Cthulhu's worshippers.
