Willem Dafoe

About 130 miles off the coast of San Diego, in a claustrophobic, smoke-filled cabin aboard the aircraft carrier USS Independence, actor Willem Dafoe is lying on his bunk thinking about Auschwitz. It isn't too difficult. Dafoe has countless hours to while away over the next 10 days in this tiny metallic cabin, which he likens to a prison cell. He is on board the bulky carrier shooting "Flight of the Intruder," a big-budget action film for Paramount.

Known as much for his wild lifestyle as his intense character studies such as "Bad Lieutenant" and "King of New York," filmmaker Abel Ferrara apparently has mellowed and straightened out, giving his most recent work an increasingly elegiac cast. In his new film, "4:44 Last Day on Earth," he depicts a couple (Willem Dafoe and the filmmaker's real-life girlfriend, Shanyn Leigh) as they face down the end of the world, which has been calculated as occurring at 4:44 in the morning. In their downtown Manhattan loft, she paints, they make love, order in Chinese food and tie up loose ends with family and friends via Skype, striving to meet what's coming with dignity and acceptance.

"In a way, he's this Byronic, early Romantic figure who both is his art and his art is him. His art is driving him, and living through him." Is director E. Elias Merhige referring to Willem Dafoe, star of Merhige's upcoming postmodernist, post-Expressionist horror movie "Shadow of the Vampire"? No, he's talking about the undead character Max Schreck, whom Dafoe impersonates with such ferocious abandon that a projectionist at an early screening asked Dafoe why his name was in the credits.

With a top-drawer cast headed by Ryan Reynolds, Julia Roberts, Willem Dafoe, Emily Watson and others, "Fireflies in the Garden" is a story of a deeply dysfunctional family suddenly fraying even faster at the seams. Unfortunately there is as much fraying being done by the film itself, which partially explains why it's been on the shelf for years. "Fireflies" unfolds in two separate eras — the abuse-marked childhood of Michael Taylor and about 20 years later as we catch up with the troubled but successful romance novelist he's become (Cayden Boyd plays the younger, Reynolds the older)

After an opening week that inspired indifference more than passion, the Festival International du Film has finally gotten people talking. Creating excitement are a director reinvestigating his past, an actor disappearing inside a part and, as always, Lars von Trier. Driving from Denmark in his vintage motor home, which he parks behind the Palais and in the lot of the luxurious Hotel du Cap, the flying-phobic Von Trier is the festival's designated enfant terrible.

WILLEM DAFOE conjures up the image of coiled intensity. During his quarter of a century on screen, he's played more than his share of villains and madmen. By his own admission, he was never "the boy next door." Starting out as an extra in the ill-fated "Heaven's Gate," the actor was cast as a postmodern heavy in 1985's "To Live and Die in L.A.," his breakthrough film, and nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar as the title character in 2000's "Shadow of the Vampire."

Willem Dafoe is briefly in Los Angeles from his home in Manhattan to rehearse with Madonna, his co-star in the upcoming film, "Body of Evidence," currently shooting in Portland. His trip comes at the tail end of a three-month vacation, and when he's asked how he spent those three months, he says, "I worked around the garage." This is somehow hard to picture. Dafoe is far too driven to while away the hours puttering.

Hot Stuff: Madonna's next film assignment sounds like a steamy one. Fresh from the baseball fields of her upcoming movie "A League of Their Own," the Material Girl will team with Willem Dafoe in producer Dino De Laurentiis' "Body of Evidence," described as "a searing erotic thriller that explores the outermost boundaries of sexual obsession."

**** "And the Band Played On" by Randy Shilts. Read by Willem Dafoe, with an afterword by Shilts. Two cassettes, abridged. Simon & Schuster. Shilts' account, based on his articles for the San Francisco Chronicle, is the fullest yet on the identification of the AIDS epidemic (which was a long time even getting a name that scientists could agree on) and of the infuriatingly laggard official steps to cope with it.

Fishing With John, Segment 4: Maine, with Willem Dafoe Directed by John Lurie DVD, $26.96 The thought of Willem Dafoe offering his parka-padded armpit in a selfless gesture while fishing on a frozen lake in northern Maine may seem scary. But it's a matter of survival in this hilarious ice fishing saga, a cross between "Waiting for Godot" and "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy."

Just a few years out of film school with an award-winning short in his backpack, Dennis Lee moved from New York to Hollywood at age 36 to make movies. Met with the usual crescendo of rejection, he cobbled together $500,000 from family and friends to direct "Fireflies in the Garden," the first screenplay he had written. Just weeks before he was to start shooting his tale about a domineering father's lasting impact on his family, Senator Entertainment, an American offshoot of a German film company, said it would give Lee $8 million to make the film.

During a water-skiing accident in 2007, Charlotte Gainsbourg suffered a blow to the head, resulting in a cerebral hemorrhage similar to the one that caused the tragic death of actress Natasha Richardson this year. Emergency brain surgery saved the now-38-year-old actress' life, but it took her nearly a year to recuperate. For her return to the big screen, Gainsbourg chose "Antichrist," opening in Los Angeles on Friday, Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier's staggering and surreal examination of grief, faith and sexuality.

WILLEM DAFOE conjures up the image of coiled intensity. During his quarter of a century on screen, he's played more than his share of villains and madmen. By his own admission, he was never "the boy next door." Starting out as an extra in the ill-fated "Heaven's Gate," the actor was cast as a postmodern heavy in 1985's "To Live and Die in L.A.," his breakthrough film, and nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar as the title character in 2000's "Shadow of the Vampire."

Fishing With John, Segment 4: Maine, with Willem Dafoe Directed by John Lurie DVD, $26.96 The thought of Willem Dafoe offering his parka-padded armpit in a selfless gesture while fishing on a frozen lake in northern Maine may seem scary. But it's a matter of survival in this hilarious ice fishing saga, a cross between "Waiting for Godot" and "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy."

When Pieter Jan Brugge was casting Fox Searchlight's new psychological thriller "The Clearing," the Dutch-born director-producer knew from the outset who he wanted for two of the lead characters: Robert Redford and Helen Mirren. The stars play a well-to-do American couple whose illusions of a happy married life are shattered when Redford's character is kidnapped.

A Willem Dafoe action figure ... what will they think of next? Of all the hundreds of actors working in Hollywood, this intense and cerebral performance artist would have to be among those least likely to be immortalized in "super-poseable, highly articulated" plastic. Stroll through any Wal-Mart or Toys R Us, and you'll find shelves full of action figures that resemble the Rock, Arnold Schwarzenegger Sylvester Stallone, Eminem, even the Simpsons.

Actor Willem Dafoe, who has portrayed a series of tortured souls in movies during the last six years, says he doesn't look for those parts. "I simply look for characters rich with possibility," he said in an interview published Sunday in The New York Times. When considering a role, though, he said he always asks, "Is this character involved in a struggle?" The struggles attract the 34-year-old actor, who stars in the new film "Triumph of the Spirit," which took him to a Nazi concentration camp.

Known as much for his wild lifestyle as his intense character studies such as "Bad Lieutenant" and "King of New York," filmmaker Abel Ferrara apparently has mellowed and straightened out, giving his most recent work an increasingly elegiac cast. In his new film, "4:44 Last Day on Earth," he depicts a couple (Willem Dafoe and the filmmaker's real-life girlfriend, Shanyn Leigh) as they face down the end of the world, which has been calculated as occurring at 4:44 in the morning. In their downtown Manhattan loft, she paints, they make love, order in Chinese food and tie up loose ends with family and friends via Skype, striving to meet what's coming with dignity and acceptance.

Rare as a crucifixion in Dracula's lair is a film opening for Oscar consideration in the last days of the year that actually has something in it worth considering. Willem Dafoe's performance in "Shadow of the Vampire" is so irresistible it not only breaks that cycle but turns an otherwise just adequate film into something everyone will want to take a look at.

Kevin Smith, the Huntington Beach High boys' soccer coach, is taking a leave of absence from his team while the Southern Section reviews an investigation of a possible rule violation. The investigation, recently conducted by Oiler Athletic Director Dave Van Hoorebeke, was prompted by a claim from a rival Sunset League school stating that Smith was coaching a Wolfpack under-19 club team during the school year. Three members of that club team also play for Smith at Huntington Beach.