10 Best Willem Dafoe Film Performances

Lars von Trier's infamous Antichrist is not a film for everyone, what with its incredibly dark tone, violent imagery, and sadomasochism, but it is under the better remembered moments a deep and powerful assessment of mental health, grief, sex and pain.

At the film's centre sits Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe (both frequent collaborators of von Trier) as a grieving couple who cope with the loss of their child in increasingly strange and horrific ways.

If anything, Antichrist is an exercise in daring. Both Gainsbourg and Dafoe are remarkable as the messed-up couple, vulnerable, tortured, haunted and scarred, with Dafoe keeping the film's insanity grounded with a more quiet and refrained performance than his equally-brilliant co-star.

Dafoe once more shows just how daring a performer he is willing to be, allowing himself to bravely fall in line with what the script and von Trier are asking of him.

Antichrist is not an easy film to watch, but it reaps many rewards for those willing to sit through the more controversial moments and really focus on the trials and hardships of the unnamed couple. Dafoe really is an actor with no fear, and this film proves it.