He's known for big-budget movies but Paul Bettany decided to downsize for his latest acting adventure. He talks to Susan Griffin about choosing a beautiful yet brutal tale that tore him away from his family

 

Paul Bettany wouldn't be the first actor to sound a note of bitterness about the current state of his profession. But unlike many of his contemporaries who seem content to soldier on, however jaded they might be feeling, Bettany has decided to take action.

"As Gandhi said, I've decided I'm going to be the change I want to see in the world," he says.

"A big ask, I know," Bettany adds, laughing, his tall, slim frame awkwardly perched on a hard-backed chair.

"But I want to start writing, directing and making movies like John Cassavetes [the Rosemary's Baby actor who turned his hand to directing independent movies], who just did what he wanted to do," adds Bettany, 41, who's promoting the small independent movie Blood.

A graduate of the Drama School in London, Bettany landed his first film role in 1997's Bent opposite Sir Ian McKellen before winning critical acclaim for his first lead in Gangster No 1.

He went on to star in A Knight's Tale with the late Heath Ledger, Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World with Russell Crowe and The Da Vinci Code alongside Tom Hanks.

That's not to say there hasn't been the odd howler along the way. Not even the sight of Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp could save The Tourist.

But it's 2001's A Beautiful Mind that he talks wistfully about when reflecting on his career.

Not only did he meet his future wife, Jennifer Connelly, on set but the success of that movie, about a brilliant but mentally troubled mathematician, seems to mark an artistic heyday.

"It grossed over 100 million dollars at the cinema. That's not going to happen any more," says Bettany, who bemoans the commercially-driven movies that now dominate the cinematic landscape.

This may be a tad hypocritical coming from the man who has voiced Jarvis (Iron Man's advanced computer system) in all three of the movies starring Robert Downey Jr and The Avengers spin-off.

But while the pay packets for those studio-financed films have evidently proven persuasive, blockbusters aren't where his heart lies.

"There is less and less interesting work out there," Bettany says, sighing. "Look at The Godfather, which was the summer blockbuster [in 1972]. It would never happen in a million years any more.

"The fact it's not [like] the Seventies is really frustrating. However, even more frustrating is listening to myself moan about it."

And for that reason he's taken it upon himself to hunt out work that truly interests him - like Blood, a British psychological thriller about two detective brothers, Joe (Bettany) and Chrissie (Stephen Graham).

For years they have lived in the shadow of their father Lenny (Brian Cox), a figurehead of the community but an uncompromising man who ran the police department with an iron fist and bullied his two sons.

With Lenny showing signs of early dementia, the brothers take it upon themselves to find the killer when a local girl is murdered.

They soon have a prime suspect, Jason Buleigh, and when they make an arrest all looks well. "Joe seems to have a lot of evidence but his boss doesn't believe that he has enough and his case falls away," Bettany explains.

After a drinking session with the boys, Joe tells Chrissie he wants to see Buleigh's face, just to let him know they are there and still watching him.

"And it goes incrementally wrong from there on, with Joe dragging his brother into the chaos he creates," says Bettany.

He likens the film "to a mix of urban British thriller and Greek tragedy" and credits the director Nick Murphy (Occupation, The Awakening) for steering a beautifully written story.

Murphy cast the angular, blond Bettany because he didn't "want the character to be a brute and I didn't want him to be too soft", he explains.

"Paul has an intelligence to him that leaves the audience unsure about how the character will react to any given stimulus," Murphy adds.

Although immediately taken with the script, the timing couldn't have been worse for Bettany.

Connelly, 42, had just given birth to their daughter Agnes, now 23 months, when the cameras started rolling on location on the Wirral peninsula just west of Liverpool.

"Being apart from my family was difficult, really stressful, but it gave me time to focus on the part," says the actor, who lives in New York and also has a son Stellan, nine, with Connelly as well as being stepfather to Kai, 15, from her previous relationship.

Bettany also admits that the couple own "a stupidly extravagant house bought with my ill-gotten gains in Vermont".

Describing his character, Bettany says: "Joe has this need to do things right, to do right by people, but to an almost crippling degree.

"He's morally ambiguous, a man with a fatal flaw who does something undoable. And he unravels himself and that's a great role to play."

When we meet Joe, he's seemingly settled in his family life, but beneath the façade he's struggling with his daughter's burgeoning sexuality and a guilt that gnaws away at him, a residue from an earlier case.

So when the girl, of a similar age to his daughter, is murdered, he allows his emotions to cloud his judgment.

"I've never killed anybody, which you'll be glad to know because you're sitting alone with me," says Bettany.

"But I have had some really borderline insane episodes brought on by grief that has in the past made me feel beside myself and not fully in control, so that's where I went to portray Joe."

Despite calling the States home for the last decade, Bettany remains the archetypal British gent in voice and demeanour and he admits there are certain aspects of his homeland he misses.

Curry appears to be top of the list. "Curries are bad in New York. Even the best, poshest ones aren't the same as here.

"When I get off the plane here, the first thing I do is text my best mate and say, 'Curry'?" he says, smiling.

The actor is only making a brief stopover before returning to the set of Transcendence, a sci-fi movie directed by Christopher Nolan's long-standing and Oscar-winning cinematographer Wally Pfister, and co-starring Johnny Depp, Morgan Freeman and Rebecca Hall.

It might be a big-budget movie but Bettany's adamant it won't be frothy or frivolous. "I have gone through lazy periods in my career and I won't be any more," he says.

"I now know I'd rather sit on my hands at home than make a movie I don't believe in."


Extra time - behind blood

:: The film was inspired by the six-part TV series Conviction, which aired in 2006.

:: Mark Strong stars as Robert Seymour, the friend and colleague who the Fairburn brothers fear will find them out.

:: Nick Murphy signed up to shoot Blood as his feature film directorial debut but scheduling saw him shoot the ghost story The Awakening first.

:: Murphy chose isolated Hilbre Island off the Wirral peninsula because, as he puts it: "I don't want to sound like a psycho but if I had to kill someone I'd bury them out there as the tide would cover my sins."

:: Stephen Graham and Paul Bettany lived together during the six-week shoot on the Wirral in a bid to forge a brotherly relationship.

 

:: Blood is released in cinemas on Friday, May 31, and on Blu-ray and DVD on Monday, June 10

:: Note, Paul Bettany is 42 on May 27