Willem Dafoe is playing a "dead person" in 'Beetlejuice 2'.

The 68-year-old actor features in the cast of Tim Burton's long-awaited sequel to his 1988 fantasy horror comedy film and revealed how he plays a ghostly detective who was a B movie star before his death.

Speaking to Variety at the Marrakech Film Festival, Willem said: "I haven't seen any footage yet, but it was fun to do. I play a police officer in the afterlife, so I'm a dead person. And in life I was a B movie action star, but I had an accident and that's what sent me to the other side.

"But because of my skills, I became a detective character in the afterlife. So that's my job. But it's coloured by the fact of who I was (when I was alive): a B movie action star."

Meanwhile, Willem portrays the unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter in Yorgos Lanthimos' film 'Poor Things' and explained how he noticed traits of the story's author Alasdair Gray in his alter ego.

The 'Platoon' actor said: "Looking at these videos of Alasdair Gray who wrote the novel. I don't know this for a fact, but I think there's a lot of Alasdair Gray in that character.

"And he's quite an amusing guy. He's eccentric, he's intellectual, he's playful. He's a thinker; a free thinker. So I think that I was working from watching videos of him, partly. Dr. Baxter is a scientist and he's turned his pain into a positive thing."

Willem also revealed that he was approached for the role as he was looking at a portrait of his surgeon father.

He said: "The portrait is in my office in my apartment in Rome. I was also looking at a beautiful piece by Marina Abramovic, whom I've worked with a bunch of times. It's a big photograph of her doing an autopsy on a woman on a slab.

"These two things: so it's in my world. They told me the broad strokes, and I was excited immediately."