After he garnered his first critical notices in 1982 for his performance in Kathryn Bigelow’s cult biker film “The Loveless,” Dafoe was typecast for a few years in weirdo-killer roles, but he’s now making the leap to romantic lead.

Having established himself as both a leading man and a character actor capable of handling roles ranging from a revisionist Jesus tortured by ambivalence in Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” to the hilariously psychotic sleazeball Bobby Peru in David Lynch’s “Wild at Heart,” Dafoe gambles on high-risk roles that are paying off well for him. But one needn’t talk to him long too detect that there’s a supercharged engine revving inside him. Juggling a family, a thriving film career and work with avant-garde New York theater company the Wooster Group, where he’s been a core member for 15 years, Dafoe comes on like a casual, laid-back guy. Dafoe is far too driven to while away the hours puttering.

His trip comes at the tail end of a three-month vacation, and when he’s asked how he spent those three months, he says, “I worked around the garage.” This is somehow hard to picture. Willem Dafoe is briefly in Los Angeles from his home in Manhattan to rehearse with Madonna, his co-star in the upcoming film, “Body of Evidence,” currently shooting in Portland.

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