At heart, Godard disliked this controversial artist (4)
I believe the answer is:
dali
'controversial artist' is the definition.
(Salvador Dali)
'at heart godard disliked' is the wordplay.
'at heart' says to take the centre.
'disliked' becomes 'li' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
The central letters of 'godard' are 'da'.
'da'+'li'='DALI'
'this' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for dali that I've seen before include "Salvador . . . . was great Spanish surrealist painter" , "Salvador -, twentieth century artist" , "Tree" , "Controversial painter" , "Salvador --, twentieth century Spanish surrealist painter" .)