The brilliance that is Willem Dafoe cannot be restricted to one role. His CV includes an impressive list of popular hits such as Finding Nemo, Spider-Man, The Boondock Saints, The English Patient, and Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

With such well-known films to his credit, it’s hard to believe that Willem was actually fired from his first role (Heaven’s Gate) that was written and directed by Michael Cimino. However, not all successful people have lives riddled with early successes. Willem Dafoe recently spoke with Total Film about some of his more celebrated films.

Willem voiced Gill, the popular renegade leader inside the fish tank where Nemo unwillingly finds himself in Finding Nemo. The sequel, Finding Dory is currently anticipated to open on June 17, 2016.

“Yeah, I’ve already started. It’s even better than the first. It’s fantastic. It’s good to say I think it’s going to be better than the first; that’s good advertising,” Willem Dafoe said before continuing. “It’s difficult to repeat a success and so many years afterwards, but it’s really cool. I’ve done one session so far and I just am going to have such a good time.”

The following video is a trailer for the upcoming movie.

The 58-year-old actor did not speak as favorably about The Amazing Spider-Man, which should not to be confused with Spider-Man, where Willem Dafoe served as the villian.

“I saw a trailer for the first Spider-Man reboot and I thought, ‘This is crazy! It’s not shot for shot, but it’s the same story. I thought, ‘This is sort of a cynical approach to making money!’ I like Spider-Man, the first one that I was involved in, because although you can argue all sorts of things, from my perspective it was very pure,” Willem said.

Willem Dafoe explained why he felt that the newer movie version of the comic book superhero had a different vibe than the previously-released films about the web-wielding hero. “This real, genuine innocence it wasn’t indicated. Then after that it became more difficult because it’s hard to achieve that when it’s gotten some kind of attention and a certain level of success!”

Though the established actor does not include frequent updates to his Twitter account, fans should be happy knowing that he is busy working on projects.

Although I said I was going to be on this more, unfortunately work kept me away. Time to catch up with the world.

— Willem Dafoe (@TheWillemDafoe) August 24, 2011

[Image Via Wikimedia Commons And Courtesy of Seanglass]