Willem Dafoe Shares The Method Behind His Video Game Voice Roles

You know Willem Dafoe. The veteran actor of over 100 movies is practically a household name in American cinema. But if you play video games you’ll hear Dafoe in about a week in Annapurna Interactive’s new game 12 Minutes from one-man developer Luis Antonio.

IGN was able to sit down with Dafoe and Antonio to talk about the upcoming game about a man trapped in a time loop, how the two creatives got working together, and Dafoe’s video game roles which, funnily enough, mirror his film appearances.

Dafoe has an extensive filmography that ranges across film, television, and video games. He’s given Academy Award-nominated turns in films like Platoon, or got down and dirty in arthouse films like The Lighthouse. He’s even appeared in popcorn blockbusters, playing the Green Goblin in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man.

In video games, too, Dafoe has seemingly run the gamut. Whether it’s AAA games like Quantic Dream’s Beyond: Two Souls, the arthouse indie 12 Minutes, or, hey, voicing the Green Goblin in the Spider-Man tie-in video game.

“It’s intentional and I try to make choices,” Dafoe says about his voice-over work. “I try to be in situations where I feel turned on and engaged, you know, a fire’s lit under me.” At the same time, Dafoe acknowledges there are some choices made for an actor beyond their control.

“The Spider-Man [game] was kind of an extension of something that I had already done as far as performing in the film. And then, Beyond: Two Souls, David Cage is a very interesting guy and he’s got a very interesting stake in how he approaches his work and what he wants to accomplish with it.”

Dafoe shared a story about the copious amount of mo-cap work he did for Beyond: Two Souls along with co-star Elliot Page. “That was a lot of mo-cap work. So basically [Elliot] Page and I did mo-cap work and sketched through all the scenes. And then we created material for the computer people to build the characters.”

And while 12 Minutes doesn’t require Dafoe to do any mocap, the actor says it allowed him to similarly dive into the work of acting.

“You’re working with the voice and there’s a great freedom to just work with your voice… And, also, you don’t have the same kind of responsibilities that you have sometimes about certain technical aspects when you’re doing a film: an awareness of the camera, costume business, all kinds of things… Everything is concentrated. You’re putting everything into your voice.”

For his part, Antonio says he always pictured which actors would voice the characters in his game. Alongside Dafoe, Daisy Ridley and James McAvoy fill out the three-person cast of 12 Minutes.

“Actually, on the early stage, before we have any casting in mind, the way the characters would be as references, Willem was in the list. Once we started the process itself, I mean, Willem was on the list and we were lucky enough that he was available and interested in the challenge.”

Dafoe’s video game credits — while not as extensive as his film credits — stretch out over 20 years. And in that time he’s seen the way the medium’s approach to acting has changed.

“They’re all quite different,” Dafoe says. “I remember years ago, I did [voiceover] for a James Bond video game, and that was great fun and we did it in an afternoon, but it was just basically a recording session and we did it very fast. Then, of course, the technology, the approach to games has changed a lot.”

“It started out real simple. It’s like, ‘Get it done, send it out there.’ There was less of a respect for what people demanded, but now [games] are so popular, the public has kind of pushed them to be more invested, more involved, more sophisticated, more… They’re more demanding.”

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.