MovieRetriever: You're here for the Chicago International Film Festival and the state of the film festival has recently reflected that of the economy. CineVegas has been cancelled. This year's Chicago fest was scaled back. There's talk about pull-back at Sundance. Can you speak about the importance of the film festival and why we need to keep them alive?

WILLEM DAFOE: I just think it's a broader thing about film and an exchange of ideas and taking stuff, particularly international elements, and bringing them locally. It's very important. It's a quality of life thing. Americans have always entrusted the marketplace to give them their culture. That works for the most part. Because of that we have very strong popular culture. But the entertainment and art that is a little more difficult or a little more cutting edge can't be sustained economically by itself and so it needs a little help. And one of the ways that you give films a good forum and allow people to speak about them and get people interested in something they may be unfamiliar with is a film festival. At its best, it represents an exchange of ideas and also just a cross-fertilization. That even works economically. I'm always struck by the model of when they moved the Frank Gehry building to make that museum in Bilbao. Bilbao was a dumpy, crummy, dark place. And, now, it's a very vital place. It's lifted up the whole city. In hard Euros. It's really changed the place. I think, particularly for a place as dynamic as Chicago, it's important to have that international cultural component.

MovieRetriever: The international aspect of your response – you've certainly worked with a lot of foreign directors – is that something that's been intentional on your part? Has it been something you sought out?

DAFOE: No, I think I'm just interested in “personal cinema” and “author cinema” rather than ... look, I like to do all kinds of things but that's normally what I feel most intensely about. And it just happens to be that a lot of those people are working in Europe. But they're also working here. People go to the movies, generally, to escape, but I also think, deeply, we go to the movies to share these experiences together. We go to a theater. And that usually comes from our culture, from stuff that we know. We often reinforce what we know. I say international in the way that it represents, quite literally, the “foreign.” Sometimes we need a little more help being introduced to it.

MovieRetriever: I'm curious about the idea of “author cinema” ...

DAFOE: ... which is quite broad.

MovieRetriever: But looking at the range of your resume begs the question as to what draws you to certain projects. “Author cinema” seems to imply you're interested in something like auteur theory....

DAFOE: Sort of. Broadly, it's people who are the driving force and they're often the people who have, in many cases, written the material. It begins with them and it ends with them. There are many ways to make a movie and that's not the only one but I often find people that are in that system are usually very full-bodied characters with very strong personal aesthetic. And I like being around those people. They inspired me. As an actor, I like to submit to someone else's vision. Going towards someone else's vision is the beginning of the pretending and the transformation – the beginning of my job. To do that, you have to find someone that you're really inspired by and feel that they need you to do something personal.

MovieRetriever: How does Lars von Trier inspire you?

DAFOE: He is certainly ... you may not like all of his movies, but you cannot deny that through the years he has played with the ways to tell a story. He's plays with film language. Every film that he's done is some sort of interesting exploration. Some are more successful than others. Also, he has an uncanny knack ... a nose for taboo things. In the case of Antichrist, he has a nose for this very human guilt, very human despair that we don't talk about. In Manderlay, he had a feeling for race things that we don't talk about.

MovieRetriever: I'm curious about his process. There's been much written about his depression on this project. When you sign on for a film like this, do you have to put a lot of trust in his hands because you don't really know what it's going to be like in the end? Or is it more mapped out than we think?

DAFOE: Not at all. Not at all. In fact, this film was made without knowing whether we could get through it. The irony is that it gave us terrific power and a kind of trust that is profound. You say much was made but [von Trier's depression] was really a huge condition of making this movie. You can't imagine. The place where he feels well is on a movie set but he was not so well. Physically, mentally – very shaky. He's very robust intellectually and also physically. Even having Lars in the state he was in was plenty for me.

MovieRetriever: Making the film, did you have an idea how controversial it would be?

DAFOE: Yes and no. I read a script and some of it is so shocking that I think "How are we going to do these things?" I mean literally. "Lars, do you REALLY mean this? Am I gonna do this? Are we gonna do this? How are you going to shoot it?" So, I knew. But he's considered ... look, his movies are always art house movies. Having said that, it had horror film elements that kind of made it more popular obviously and I still think that's a possibility, but it's not really a horror film. It borrows from horror language. But it doesn't satisfy if you go into it expecting a horror film. I think it's too demanding. Horror films are usually about titillation and playing a game with the audience. This film is a little too demanding for your average horror film.

MovieRetriever: It's intellectual....

DAFOE: Well, it's like anything that's complex. You can enter it on many levels. Some people are going to find it boring or too rough, but for the people who have a taste for it ... it will mean very different things to different people.

MovieRetriever: What does it mean to you?

DAFOE: Well, I've seen it three times, which is very rare after I've done a movie but it really stays with me. This time [at the fest], I really had to make a decision NOT to see it. I'm happy to talk about it. I like the film very much and I want to support it, but it's like I need a little distance. It gets under your skin and it's very much.... When I see a movie like this, it gets me in touch with certain dark parts of me that allow me to kind of embrace a bottom line. If you can embrace that darkness, it can be kind of exhilarating. It's when we can't think about those things that we feel the repression; we feel the boredom; we feel the tedium. This film is very rough but in its more lyrical moments I feel oddly exhilarated. Like the very enigmatic epilogue. I feel inexplicably moved by that.

MovieRetriever: Why do you think people have responded so strongly to the film, positively and negatively?

DAFOE: Just because of the things we're talking about. It's a film that's hard to account for. And there are some very extreme things that you're not used to seeing in films. People react to that and sometimes they're very literal. They think the movie is about that. I think the strong reaction is people hanging their hat on the extremeness of it. When they're lazy, they put very simple politics on it. I think what makes it difficult is the unrelenting examination of depression, despair, guilt. People really have a hard time with, although they admire Charlotte's performance, they have a hard time accepting what she's thinking. I was thinking about this the other day. I remember when my son's mother was pregnant with him. At one point, she had a little anxiety and said, "What if I don't love him? What if our life together ends?" My immediate, cultured response was kind of a panic. "You can't think those things. What do you mean? You're a mother. You've GOT to love this baby. That's imperative." In the same way, this flirts with guilt for feeling split with different roles and pulling in different directions.

MovieRetriever: For a film that's so much subtext – characters named "He" and "She," arguable symbolism – is it difficult to play the realism of the character? To play it as a human being experiencing these events?

DAFOE: Not at all because you have very specific situations. For me, I had a very specific task. It was scripted. This wasn't true improvisation. But they weren't rehearsed. So, we would learn our dialogue and, because the shooting style is very loose and we weren't rehearsed, it felt a little like improvisation. You only have your task and this dialogue as a way to get you to your task but there were so many things that you couldn't factor in because they weren't figured out in rehearsal. It sounds simple. Conventionally, in a scene like those early scenes that are quite talky, you knew where they started and where they ended, but how you got from point A to point C was a big question mark. As part of the preparation, I studied and sat in on behavioral therapy sessions. So, I knew some of the language because Lars has taken that therapy and knew some of the language. So, some of the situation, we knew the structure. When you say, "Is it difficult to be real?" No. Because I had real things to do. And, also, the terrifying and the vulnerable part is that, in rehearsal, you haven't blocked out movement, set expectation, tone. So, on one hand, you're scared to death and feel very insecure because you have nothing to root for. On the other hand, because you don't and because the camera is very fluid and the lights are set with very few technical obligations ... he doesn't work with a traditional cutting pattern. He believes anything can cut to anything. You're not doing coverage in a traditional way. So, you're also very free. What you're doing is what's happening.

MovieRetriever: Can that make it the other extreme? Too real and difficult to shake? Can you leave it on the set?

DAFOE: I always used to say that the camera activates you and when the situation to support the character goes away, the character returns inside you. I sort of believe that but, as I get older, I find that when I do a role like this and I have a lot of responsibility, it becomes harder and harder to shake. But I've always kind of laughed when I heard actors say that. (Laughs.) I always thought, "Grow up! Get a job!"

MovieRetriever: But this one sounds more like therapy than a normal shoot.

DAFOE: Well, let's not talk about that because people get upset about that. It repels them on the movie. I never think of what I do as therapy but what I do is very personal, so how can you not take it personally. That's the only way you don't become cynical about what you do. It has to stay personal. You're exploring how you feel, seeing how your brain works, your relationship to other people, challenge what you think about who you are, the myth of personality, etc. You're playing with a lot of things that aren't intended as therapy but bringing your life into your work. These are things I think about anyway but they're focused in a constructive way.

MovieRetriever: You said you've seen Antichrist three times and that's rare. You don't go back and look at your old films?

DAFOE: No.

MovieRetriever: Do you have any personal favorites?

DAFOE: I do. I do have personal favorites, but, on principle, I don't allow ... It's like opinions. People have opinions, but you don't want to cling to them because they close down your imagination. I feel like I'm the same way. If I start to value one thing over another too much then I keep going back to that impulse. Or I keep on trying to experience that or create that same experience. I also don't think it's important what I think. I do it. I live with it. Sometimes it's better than I thought it was going to be. Sometimes it's worse. What I do is mediated by so many different hands. I do something that I hope will have integrity internally and it will survive whatever happens to it but you know damn well that you can do something very well-intentioned and also very connected and accomplished, but the nature of filmmaking is a convergence of so many different aspects that it's out of your hands.