Paul Bettany Interview
Last weekend, the Globe and Mail had an incredibly smart, funny profile of Paul Bettany.
I knew it was going to be good when the writer of the piece started by complaining that in spite of Legion's poster, Bettany hadn't bared his chest nearly enough in the actual movie. (He doesn't.) Then came this line from the man himself:
For Legion, I cannot be celestial. So I looked in the museum, and I saw that all the angels were ripped and carried swords and spears. So I went to the gym, but I also knew that at some point they would put 8-foot wings on me, and people would go, 'Look, it’s a fucking angel.'
I don't think I could possibly love him more. *g*
For the visually-minded, here's the picture that accompanied the profile:
Seriously, is he not gorgeous?
Smarten Up, Paul
by Johanna Schneller
The movie poster led me on. The one-sheet for Legion, the apocalypse-on-a-shoestring thriller that opened last week, features the actor Paul Bettany, shirtless, his abdominal muscles so defined they look like tire tracks. At last, I thought, Bettany, 38, is reaching for the stardom that is his due. He’s one of the most intriguing actors around, because he goes deep into every role - witness how different he is in A Beautiful Mind vs. A Knight’s Tale or Master and Commander - yet we always feel that he’s barely scratched the surface of his talents. He’s also the lead in Creation (which opened last week, too), a much higher-brow affair about Charles Darwin’s struggle to write On the Origin of Species. Together the two demonstrate Bettany’s range of abilities and interests, yadda yadda. Now what about those abs?
Turns out they’re a total tease. In Legion, Bettany plays the archangel Michael, who defies God’s order to destroy mankind and helps a ragtag militia fend off an unheavenly host. Except for one scene where he bares his back, he keeps his shirt fully buttoned throughout. The guy just can’t bring himself to play the golden boy card.
He was maddeningly modest in a recent phone interview, too. “Some roles, like Darwin, I approach from the inside out, while others are from the outside in,” he said. “In Legion I am a warrior angel, so I knew I needed to go to the gym and get fit because it would make me stand differently.”
Dear, foolish Paul, I had no idea how much you needed me. First of all, a movie star goes to the gym so he can show off, not so he can “stand differently.” Have you learned nothing from Brad Pitt? And second, you chuckled after you said the words “warrior angel.” That kind of self-deprecating humour may fly in your native England, but over here big stars take themselves a little too seriously. I mean, more seriously.
I floated this by him, but he would not be schooled. “The things that you can’t do as an actor are as important to work out as the things you can,” he said. “For Creation, I cannot be the man who came up with the greatest single idea a human being has ever come up with. What I can do is be a person who knows about loss and madness, and try to find that part of Darwin and represent it. For Legion, I cannot be celestial. So I looked in the museum, and I saw that all the angels were ripped and carried swords and spears. So I went to the gym, but I also knew that at some point they would put 8-foot wings on me, and people would go, ‘Look, it’s a fucking angel.’”
By now I was pale. Being convinced that one is celestial is essential to making it in Hollywood. Do you think James Cameron slinks around saying, “I cannot be celestial?” No! He orders teams of translators to teach him how to say, “I’m king of the world!” in Na’vi.
“The only plan I’ve had is to balance wanting to do lots of different things with what gets offered to me,” Bettany continued. “I’m doing an action lead in Priest [due out later this year]. We’ll see what you think of that.” He paused. I could feel the C-phrase coming. And then it came. I think of myself,” Bettany said, “as a character actor.”
At that point I must have fainted. When I came to I phoned Jon Amiel, who directed Creation - and who has a pretty wide range himself, having made both The Singing Detective series and Entrapment. I feared he was too British and too brainy (he graduated from Cambridge) to help, but when he told me he was in L.A. waiting for his car at a repair shop, I figured he was far enough inside to tell me why Bettany isn’t a leading man.
“I think a little bad luck,” Amiel answered. “With a little better luck, Wimbledon [Bettany’s 2004 rom-com with Kirsten Dunst] could have been a commercial success and made Paul a major movie star. Sometimes, I venture to say, people like him are too good as actors to become movie stars. But everything is there for Paul, the looks, the ability - he just needs to catch the right wave.”
The “too good an actor” thing was troubling, but Amiel’s next compliments were on track. He called Bettany, “funny, immensely playful and relaxed on set. He knows more about the camera than 50 per cent of cameramen that I’ve worked with. He intuitively understands how to turn just into the light. He’s also immensely dedicated. There was never a day where he didn’t come totally prepared.”
This was spin Bettany could use. Too bad Amiel didn’t stop there. “But mainly, Paul has that quality that I coveted for Creation,” he continued, “an intense, lively intelligence, the ability effortlessly to make believable the complex ideas coming out of his mouth. I would love to film Paul simply thinking.”
Good god! Intelligence? Thinking? Amiel needed to get his car fixed pronto and cruise the billboards on Sunset for a few hours to clear his head. When he amiably launched into his own doubts about making Creation - “People aren’t exactly lining up to make or see a film about Charles Darwin. On the face of it, he doesn’t seem to be the most scintillating subject” - I had to hang up and hyperventilate into a paper bag.
I combed Bettany’s interview for sound bites that would up his movie-star cred. There was a cute bit about playing husband to his real-life wife, the actress Jennifer Connelly, in Creation: “When people are trying to present a marriage on screen, they tend to look at each other too much, when really, a lot of ignoring goes on,” he said. “When I’m sitting watching television with my wife and I put my hand out, I don’t need to look at her, I know where her hand is, because it’s been there for the last seven years. So I think the film got that much for free. Also, when we’d put the kids to bed and were lying in bed exhausted, Jennifer and I were able to talk about the next day’s work. Now, I’m not saying that it’s in any way abnormal for leading actors and actresses to be in bed together - but I doubt they’re talking about the next day’s work.”
Yes! Charming! Also passable was Bettany’s line about being a fervent researcher, which “is a double-edged sword, if you’re a glass half-empty person like myself,” because no matter how many books by and about Darwin he read, “I’m convinced that the key to playing him was in the books I didn’t read.”
But then, by way of explaining how living in New York helps keep his ego in check, he compared the cabdrivers to “the guy who used to walk behind Caesar in processions saying, ‘You’re not a god, you’re not a god.’” (Yeah, those Caesar references really slay them in Peoria.) Finally, when he said of Creation, “It was my responsibility to find the drama in an otherwise internal story, and it’s for you to write whether I succeeded or not, but I tell you one thing, I tried my effing best,” I gave up. Paul, I adore you, but you’re on your own.
I knew it was going to be good when the writer of the piece started by complaining that in spite of Legion's poster, Bettany hadn't bared his chest nearly enough in the actual movie. (He doesn't.) Then came this line from the man himself:
For Legion, I cannot be celestial. So I looked in the museum, and I saw that all the angels were ripped and carried swords and spears. So I went to the gym, but I also knew that at some point they would put 8-foot wings on me, and people would go, 'Look, it’s a fucking angel.'
I don't think I could possibly love him more. *g*
For the visually-minded, here's the picture that accompanied the profile:
Seriously, is he not gorgeous?
Smarten Up, Paul
by Johanna Schneller
The movie poster led me on. The one-sheet for Legion, the apocalypse-on-a-shoestring thriller that opened last week, features the actor Paul Bettany, shirtless, his abdominal muscles so defined they look like tire tracks. At last, I thought, Bettany, 38, is reaching for the stardom that is his due. He’s one of the most intriguing actors around, because he goes deep into every role - witness how different he is in A Beautiful Mind vs. A Knight’s Tale or Master and Commander - yet we always feel that he’s barely scratched the surface of his talents. He’s also the lead in Creation (which opened last week, too), a much higher-brow affair about Charles Darwin’s struggle to write On the Origin of Species. Together the two demonstrate Bettany’s range of abilities and interests, yadda yadda. Now what about those abs?
Turns out they’re a total tease. In Legion, Bettany plays the archangel Michael, who defies God’s order to destroy mankind and helps a ragtag militia fend off an unheavenly host. Except for one scene where he bares his back, he keeps his shirt fully buttoned throughout. The guy just can’t bring himself to play the golden boy card.
He was maddeningly modest in a recent phone interview, too. “Some roles, like Darwin, I approach from the inside out, while others are from the outside in,” he said. “In Legion I am a warrior angel, so I knew I needed to go to the gym and get fit because it would make me stand differently.”
Dear, foolish Paul, I had no idea how much you needed me. First of all, a movie star goes to the gym so he can show off, not so he can “stand differently.” Have you learned nothing from Brad Pitt? And second, you chuckled after you said the words “warrior angel.” That kind of self-deprecating humour may fly in your native England, but over here big stars take themselves a little too seriously. I mean, more seriously.
I floated this by him, but he would not be schooled. “The things that you can’t do as an actor are as important to work out as the things you can,” he said. “For Creation, I cannot be the man who came up with the greatest single idea a human being has ever come up with. What I can do is be a person who knows about loss and madness, and try to find that part of Darwin and represent it. For Legion, I cannot be celestial. So I looked in the museum, and I saw that all the angels were ripped and carried swords and spears. So I went to the gym, but I also knew that at some point they would put 8-foot wings on me, and people would go, ‘Look, it’s a fucking angel.’”
By now I was pale. Being convinced that one is celestial is essential to making it in Hollywood. Do you think James Cameron slinks around saying, “I cannot be celestial?” No! He orders teams of translators to teach him how to say, “I’m king of the world!” in Na’vi.
“The only plan I’ve had is to balance wanting to do lots of different things with what gets offered to me,” Bettany continued. “I’m doing an action lead in Priest [due out later this year]. We’ll see what you think of that.” He paused. I could feel the C-phrase coming. And then it came. I think of myself,” Bettany said, “as a character actor.”
At that point I must have fainted. When I came to I phoned Jon Amiel, who directed Creation - and who has a pretty wide range himself, having made both The Singing Detective series and Entrapment. I feared he was too British and too brainy (he graduated from Cambridge) to help, but when he told me he was in L.A. waiting for his car at a repair shop, I figured he was far enough inside to tell me why Bettany isn’t a leading man.
“I think a little bad luck,” Amiel answered. “With a little better luck, Wimbledon [Bettany’s 2004 rom-com with Kirsten Dunst] could have been a commercial success and made Paul a major movie star. Sometimes, I venture to say, people like him are too good as actors to become movie stars. But everything is there for Paul, the looks, the ability - he just needs to catch the right wave.”
The “too good an actor” thing was troubling, but Amiel’s next compliments were on track. He called Bettany, “funny, immensely playful and relaxed on set. He knows more about the camera than 50 per cent of cameramen that I’ve worked with. He intuitively understands how to turn just into the light. He’s also immensely dedicated. There was never a day where he didn’t come totally prepared.”
This was spin Bettany could use. Too bad Amiel didn’t stop there. “But mainly, Paul has that quality that I coveted for Creation,” he continued, “an intense, lively intelligence, the ability effortlessly to make believable the complex ideas coming out of his mouth. I would love to film Paul simply thinking.”
Good god! Intelligence? Thinking? Amiel needed to get his car fixed pronto and cruise the billboards on Sunset for a few hours to clear his head. When he amiably launched into his own doubts about making Creation - “People aren’t exactly lining up to make or see a film about Charles Darwin. On the face of it, he doesn’t seem to be the most scintillating subject” - I had to hang up and hyperventilate into a paper bag.
I combed Bettany’s interview for sound bites that would up his movie-star cred. There was a cute bit about playing husband to his real-life wife, the actress Jennifer Connelly, in Creation: “When people are trying to present a marriage on screen, they tend to look at each other too much, when really, a lot of ignoring goes on,” he said. “When I’m sitting watching television with my wife and I put my hand out, I don’t need to look at her, I know where her hand is, because it’s been there for the last seven years. So I think the film got that much for free. Also, when we’d put the kids to bed and were lying in bed exhausted, Jennifer and I were able to talk about the next day’s work. Now, I’m not saying that it’s in any way abnormal for leading actors and actresses to be in bed together - but I doubt they’re talking about the next day’s work.”
Yes! Charming! Also passable was Bettany’s line about being a fervent researcher, which “is a double-edged sword, if you’re a glass half-empty person like myself,” because no matter how many books by and about Darwin he read, “I’m convinced that the key to playing him was in the books I didn’t read.”
But then, by way of explaining how living in New York helps keep his ego in check, he compared the cabdrivers to “the guy who used to walk behind Caesar in processions saying, ‘You’re not a god, you’re not a god.’” (Yeah, those Caesar references really slay them in Peoria.) Finally, when he said of Creation, “It was my responsibility to find the drama in an otherwise internal story, and it’s for you to write whether I succeeded or not, but I tell you one thing, I tried my effing best,” I gave up. Paul, I adore you, but you’re on your own.