Willem Dafoe

William James Dafoe was born on July 22, 1955, in Appleton, Wisconsin, to Muriel Isabel (née Sprissler; 1922–2012) and Dr. William Alfred Dafoe (1917–2014). He recalled in 2009, "My five sisters raised me because my father was a surgeon, my mother was a nurse and they worked together, so I didn't see either of them much." His brother, Donald, is a surgeon and research scientist. His surname, Dafoe, is the English version of the Swiss-French surname Thévou. In high school, he acquired the nickname Willem, the Dutch version of the name William. He later grew more accustomed to it than his birth name.

After attending Appleton East High School, Dafoe studied drama at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, but left after 18 months to join the experimental theater company Theatre X in Milwaukee, before moving to New York City in 1976. He then apprenticed under Richard Schechner, the director of the avant-garde theater troupe The Performance Group, where he met and became romantically involved with director Elizabeth LeCompte. Following tensions between Schechner and other members after they started staging their own productions outside of the group, Schechner left and the remaining members (including LeCompte and her ex-boyfriend Spalding Gray) renamed themselves The Wooster Group. Dafoe soon joined the new company and is credited as one of its co-founders. He continued his work with the group into the 2000s, well after establishing himself as a Hollywood film star.