Willem Dafoe hallucination. The cameo was suggested by Dafoe, comparing it to the ghost of Hamlet's father visiting his son to ask him to avenge his death. Dafoe was next seen in the comedy-drama "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" (2004), his first of three films with director Wes Anderson. He played the "hilariously doltish" German first mate of a research vessel owned by the eponymous lead character, who is played by Bill Murray. Dafoe then had a small role as a tabloid magazine editor in Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator" (2004), a biographical film about Howard Hughes starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Also in
Bill Murray and again in 2006 for "". Murray later said that he only took the role because he was under the mistaken impression the screenplay, co-written by Joel Cohen, was the work of Joel Coen. In 2004, he made his third collaboration with Wes Anderson in "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" and in 2005 his second collaboration with Jim Jarmusch in "Broken Flowers". That same year, Murray announced that he was taking a hiatus from acting as he had not had the time to relax since his new breakthrough in the late 1990s. He did return to the big screen