Willem Dafoe’s favorite farm chore is putting the animals to bed at night. The four-time Oscar nominee said so in a September 2026 interview on NPR’s Wild Card with Rachel Martin, and the moment has since spread across social media.
On his property outside Rome, the 71-year-old actor described opening the nighttime shelter and watching
“35 goats and sheep stampeding toward me to open the door to their little place to sleep.”
He called the scene beautiful. When Martin suggested the animals needed his help, Dafoe flipped the idea:
“No, they’re helping me. That’s the idea.”
“Putting them to bed” is not literal. The animals spend the day in the fields. At night Dafoe closes them into a protected enclosure because of predators. They also sleep and eat there whatever they left uneaten in the pasture. The stampede is the part he looks forward to.
Later in the same conversation he explained why simple farm work matters to him.
“I’m never happier than washing dishes or cleaning up the animal shit or doing simple tasks where there’s an A, B, C, and you can live in the simplicity of those tasks,”
He said.
“For me, it’s a good meditation, for a lack of a better word.”
The routine keeps him in touch with nature and the rise and fall of things.
That is the context behind the viral phrasing that Dafoe “finds peace.” He did not use those exact words in the exchange about the goats and sheep. He spoke of beauty, pleasure, simplicity and meditation. Social-media posts, including one from Pubity, reasonably summarized the feeling without inventing the substance.
Dafoe has talked about the farm for years. In a 2024 Guardian interview he said he keeps “lots of animals” sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys, alpacas mainly for their company and to give them a good life. He is largely vegetarian. A 2026 profile by A Rabbit’s Foot described roughly 30 goats plus sheep, alpacas and other animals on the same property outside Rome. The numbers can shift; the NPR figure specifically counted the goats and sheep that rush him at night.
The contrast is what travels. The same face that played the Green Goblin and Max Schreck is the one herding animals into a shelter after dark. Fans have joked about “shepherd mode” and the escape from Hollywood intensity. Dafoe has long described the farm as a place of practical responsibility and humility he still has to ask experienced hands for help and keeps learning.
