How Willem Dafoe Became an ‘Extension’ of ‘At Eternity’s Gate’ Director Julian Schnabel

Willem Dafoe has known Julian Schnabel, a famed painter and his director on “At Eternity’s Gate,” for roughly 30 years. But Dafoe, who received his fourth Oscar nomination on Tuesday morning and his first ever in the lead actor category, explained why the experience making this film made him closer to Schnabel than ever before.

“It’s a very personal kind of filmmaking. So I become his creature. I become an extension of him,” Dafoe told TheWrap. “One of the beautiful things about it was I felt like we were the same person. We had a short hand, we didn’t talk much, but we did the painting, and we were in the places where Van Gogh was. It was a very strong experience, and the film is an expression of that.