The six actors to play Dylan in new film - including Cate Blanchett

He is, notoriously, a man with many sides to his character – which might explain why the makers of a new film about Bob Dylan felt the need to use no fewer than six stars to play him, including a black child actor and lithe blonde actress Cate Blanchett.

In director Todd Haynes's film I'm Not There, the Dylan actors – who also include stars Richard Gere and Heath Ledger – are asked to play different 'theories' of the mercurial superstar, rather than the man himself.

Scroll to the bottom to see Cate play Bob in the new film

The film, which receives its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival this week, also features dozens of rock stars playing music by the legendary singer-songwriter, now 66.

Fragments of Blanchett's performance have already caused a sensation on the internet and the film is tipped for Oscars.

But as its subtitle – Suppositions On A Film Concerning Dylan – suggests, this is no straightforward biopic. As Blanchett warns: "It's a very fractured rendition of a persona. Prepare yourself, it's tricky."

I am a lonesome hobo

Child star Marcus Carl Franklin, 13, makes his film debut playing the young travelling hobo that Dylan liked to portray himself as, although he was really a middle-class boy from Minnesota.

Marcus's character is called Woody, after Woody Guthrie, the folk singer and activist who inspired Dylan's early career.

John Wesley Hiding ...

Brokeback Mountain cowboy Heath Ledger, 28, plays Dylan in the late Sixties, retreating behind sunglasses after a road accident but still making classic albums such as John Wesley Harding.

Knockin' on heaven's door

Hollywood heartthrob Richard Gere, 57, takes on the role of Billy, a character drawn from the grizzled, cowboys-and-country-music side of Bob Dylan's persona.

Billy embodies the Bob Dylan behind the 1973 album Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid, with its classic track Knockin' On Heaven's Door.

The times they are a-changin'

It's a good job Batman actor Christian Bale, 33, is used to costume changes – he plays two characters in the film.

The first corresponds to Dylan's early days as an idealistic protest-singer in New York's Greenwich Village and the second picks up his story 15 years later, when he is still an evangelist, but for fundamentalist Christianity, rather than anti-establishment idealism.

Like a rolling stone

Ben Whishaw – a 26-year-old RADA graduate from Clifton, Bedfordshire – is making a speciality of playing rockers.

In the 2005 film Stoned, he played Rolling Stone Keith Richards.

Now, he embodies Dylan's poetic side in a character called Arthur – a reference to one of Dylan's inspirations, the bisexual, absinthe-drinking, 19th Century French poet Arthur Rimbaud.

Blonde on Blanchett

Cate Blanchett plays Dylan in his mid-20s, his creative peak when he produced such masterpiece albums as Blonde On Blonde.

Her character is called Jude, a reference to the anguished cry of 'Judas!' screamed at Dylan by one fan at Manchester's Free Trade Hall in 1966, outraged by his supposed betrayal of his old folk-music style in favour of electric rock music.

Director Todd Haynes wanted a woman as he found Dylan's look then to be quite effeminate. Cate's transformation is remarkably convincing.

Watch Cate in I'm Not There...