Willem Dafoe Is A Wanted Man In Hollywood These Days

Actor says he was intrigued by character, story in 'Wanted Man' Spy movies often boast labyrinthine plots, but "A Most Wanted Man," director Anton Corbijn's feature film based on John le Carré's novel, is actually built on a fairly straightforward story about a Chechen Muslim who arrives illegally in Hamburg, Germany, and sets off bells and whistles among international anti-terrorism organizations. The labyrinth in the film is its interconnected matrix of characters, which includes spies and terrorism experts from various nations, lawyers, bankers and all sorts of international players swept up in high-stakes hysteria. The film, which opens Friday, is the last one completed by actor Philip Seymour Hoffman prior to his death earlier this year. Dafoe has enjoyed a particularly strong run of roles this year, having played a henchman in Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel," an alcoholic writer in "The Fault in Our Stars" and now Brue, in Corbijn's gripping tale. Dafoe is currently doing a theater piece with director Robert Wilson but took a break to talk about "A Most Wanted Man" and working with Hoffman. Was there a part in the script that you felt was your path into the character? [...] there's this one central event centered around this illegal Chechen immigrant that you see from many perspectives. The suits reflected - and this isn't something you'd necessarily notice - but one thing about Hamburg, it has a very weird strange strain of Englishness, of Britishness to it. In the geography of this film - with all the different political concerns in the intelligence community - you have this British guy, an international banker who figured into the story. There were a lot of moral gray areas in the film, which made me think of much of Corbijn's photography, which often has a blurred effect. All the moral dilemmas and political ...