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Dafoe had to learn to paint like van Gogh in At Eternity's Gate

VENICE With his ginger beard, straw hat and a sad, wounded expression, US actor Willem Dafoe, 63, looked uncannily like a Vincent van Gogh self-portrait, when he played the artist in the biopic At Eternity's Gate.

Opening here tomorrow, it begins with the impoverished van Gogh in Paris in the 1880s where his paintings are, at best, ignored and, at worst, derided as incompetent.

It follows him to the south of France, in and out of mental asylums, and ends with his death a couple of years later, at 37, with a bullet in his stomach that is not the suicide historians have speculated was the cause of death.

At Eternity's Gate is directed by Julian Schnabel, who made The Diving Bell And The Butterfly (2007) and is himself an artist who recreated some of van Gogh's work for the film and helped Dafoe learn how to handle a paintbrush.

"There is a lot of painting in the movie. I had to know how to paint," said Dafoe, who received a best actor Oscar nomination this year for the role.

"Julian is a great artist and he is a great teacher, and to have him there teaching me how to see in a new way was thrilling."

Dafoe portrays van Gogh as a deeply lonely man who takes solace in nature and his work - "I paint to stop thinking", he says at one point.

Although he suffers blackouts and bouts of anger, his Van Gogh does not come across as mad, but certainly as someone suffering mental torment.

"He saw the value (of suffering)," Dafoe said. "He thought sickness can heal us."

Now revered as one of the greatest painters, van Gogh died before his true artistic value had been recognised.

"Maybe God gave me a gift to paint for people who aren't here yet," he says in the film. - REUTERS

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