When it fixes its gaze on a subject, it drains that subject of flesh and blood. It reduces the subject to a shadow. And the shadow becomes immortal, outliving the subject. A strange notion from a guy who makes his living behind the camera. It's very idiosyncratic, and that appealed to me as an actor.
Vampires are very romantic, tragic figures.
They live forever, but that's not everything that it's cracked up to be. In many ways, Dafoe says, he was viewed on the set as something of a vampire himself. It took a little over three hours to get into the makeup. And at the end of the day, it took an hour to get undressed. It was interesting, because some of the people I worked with never saw me as anything other than Schreck.