Stellan Skarsgard; from painter to Pirate...

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From Goya to grotesque, Bootstrap Bill and his “varied diet”.

You’re playing the eponymous master in Goya’s Ghosts. Fan of the man’s work?
Oh, very much so. The first time I was in Madrid, I went to the Prado Museum and got stuck half a day in front of Goya. He’s an amazing painter, especially when you look at how he progressed from his early, pretty naïve paintings to the more modern ones that were like 100 years ahead of their time.

You’re a pretty accomplished painter in the film. Did you take any lessons?
I didn’t care much about the technique. It was more about getting close to Goya and what he felt and how he reacted to the society he lived in. The technical side? All the times you see my hand doing a real painting, it’s a real painter... I’m just not good enough. The guy who instructed me told me it would take 10 years to get the brush working in an appropriate way. So I gave that up.

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