Willem Dafoe on Hector Babenco’s Swansong, ‘My Hindu Friend,’ & Barbara Paz’s ‘Babenco: Tell Me When I Die’
Anna Marie de la Fuente While speaking at a masterclass at Mexico’s 2019 Morelia Film Festival, Willem Dafoe said about acting: “When you do the bidding of someone else, it’s like falling in love: You have a new energy, you don’t think about yourself, you’re on an adventure… and it’s always better when it’s through someone else; you become their creature.”Indeed, Dafoe has portrayed a slew of characters in his storied career, but perhaps inhabiting Hector Babenco’s alter-ego Diego in the deeply personal “My Hindu Friend” was among his more challenging. While Babenco’s last film was not strictly auto-biographical, it was based on his epic battle with cancer combined with some imagined sequences.