A softer focus for a bad-guy role

When Pieter Jan Brugge was casting Fox Searchlight’s new psychological thriller “The Clearing,” the Dutch-born director-producer knew from the outset who he wanted for two of the lead characters: Robert Redford and Helen Mirren. The stars play a well-to-do American couple whose illusions of a happy married life are shattered when Redford’s character is kidnapped.

But Brugge hadn’t yet chosen the third key role -- the kidnapper -- when he received a call one day from Willem Dafoe, who expressed interest in the part.

“I had always admired him as an actor,” Brugge said of Dafoe, “but when I saw him in person, there was a sensitivity to him and a vulnerability and humanity that I had not seen in some of his performances because he had frequently been used as the tough guy.... In this one, I wanted to strip all that away and go to the man behind the mask, so to speak.”

From Jesus of Nazareth in Martin Scorsese’s thought-provoking 1988 drama “The Last Temptation of Christ,” to the comic book villain Norman Osborn/the Green Goblin in Sam Raimi’s 2002 box-office hit “Spider-Man,” Dafoe has long been one of Hollywood’s most versatile character actors. He received Oscar nominations for best supporting actor for 1986’s “Platoon” and 2000’s “Shadow of the Vampire.”

But the challenge for Dafoe and Brugge in “The Clearing” was to create a villain who doesn’t look like one.

“In ‘Spider-Man,’ Willem plays up his physical qualities,” Brugge said. “Here, it was about how can we make him as ordinary and average an American as we can make him, and that is what we did. We shot almost all of his shots with very long lenses, which compresses the depth, so as a result, the sharpness of his features and the angles of his bone structure don’t come out.”

“The Clearing” opens Friday in Los Angeles, San Diego and 10 other cities before rolling out in more cities over the following two weeks.