Willem Dafoe on Playing a Poet in ‘Late Fame’ and Working With Robert Eggers and Yorgos Lanthimos: ‘If I Give Myself to a Director, I Want It to Burn Hot’

Willem Dafoe is in the midst of a massive year — and he’s playing a character whose life is small by design. In director Kent Jones’ “Late Fame” (out Aug. 7 in New York and Aug. 19 in Los Angeles and other cities), Dafoe plays Ed Saxberger, a postal employee who, in his youth, had…

Late Fame which premiered a year ago this month at the Venice Film Festival is a gem. It is a movie about, among other things, discovery and rediscovery. It may be a year after critics first saw this movie that I am only just discovering it myself as it begins its theatrical engagements, but if…