Willem Dafoe made his And co-star Emma Stone slap him about 20 times despite being off-camera for the scene.

In one scene in Yorgos Lanthimos’s anthology movie, the La La Land star’s character is seen slapping Dafoe’s, who is meant to be off-camera. Stone would usually do the slapping gesture without the actor present, but Dafoe insisted she did it to him for real because the act would look more genuine – and he ended up taking the stage slap around 20 times.

“There’s this instinct to perform that many actors have – the ‘look at me, look at me!’ kind of performer,” Stone said as part of a profile of Dafoe in T: The New York Times Style Magazine. “He’s the opposite of that.”

“Maybe it’s changed through the years,” she added. “A lot of actors I bond with have been doing this for a long time, and you know, they’ve gone from ‘I’ to ‘We.'”

The Cruella star told the publication that she was struck by how The Lighthouse actor loved being on set and was often there even though he wasn’t required.

“That’s what you want from actors,” Lanthimos praised. “To want to be part of it in any way.”

And marks the second of two upcoming collaborations between Lanthimos, his The Favourite star and Dafoe. They also lead his Victorian-era sci-fi romance Poor Things.

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