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First look at Willem Dafoe as Vincent van Gogh

Willem Dafoe as van Gogh (Credit: CBS Films)
Willem Dafoe as van Gogh (Credit: CBS Films)

Willem Dafoe has unveiled his transformation into the painter Vincent Willem van Gogh for new biopic At Eternity’s Gate.

Boasting a sturdy ginger beard, he looks every bit the famous Dutch post-impressionist.

Helmed by director Julian Schnabel, himself a painter, it’s been announced that the film will close the New York Film Festival in October.

Dafoe is joined on the bill by Oscar Isaac, who plays French artist Paul Gauguin, Rupert Friend, Emmanuelle Seigner and Mads Mikkelsen.

(Credit: AFP)
(Credit: AFP)

It’s the first film that Schnabel has made in eight years, after his 2010 drama Miral with Freida Pinto, and following his acclaimed adaptation of the novel The Diving Bell and the Butterfly in 2007, which was nominated for four Oscars.

The movie tracks the final hours of van Gogh’s life, and while Dafoe certainly looks the part, there’s a yawning age gap at play.

Dafoe is 63, while van Gogh died at the age of 37 after years of mental illness and poverty.

He shot himself in July of 1890, dying some 30 hours after inflicting the wound to his chest.

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