Lori Reese for Entertainment Weekly, 6th June 2001
The "Knight" Stuff

Paul Bettany talks about working with Russell Crowe. The breakout star of "A Knight's Tale" tells EW.com about Ron Howard's upcoming "A Beautiful Mind."

Not long ago "A Knight's Tale"'s Paul Bettany had trouble landing meaty parts in Hollywood. Why? "Because I'm British and not Rupert Everett," he tells EW.com. But now that he's working alongside Russell Crowe on the upcoming Ron Howard-directed drama "A Beautiful Mind," that's likely to change. Indeed, "Mind" is just one of two serious gigs the lanky London born actor, 30, landed hot off his critically praised role as a quick-witted, gambling-addicted Geoffrey Chaucer in "A Knight's Tale." He'll also appear opposite Willem Dafoe in the upcoming English thriller "Morality Play."

We caught up with Bettany while he was filming "Mind" in New York City, and asked him what it's like working with Hollywood's thespian elite.

You began filming "A Beautiful Mind" just as "Gladiator" and Crowe won their Academy Awards. Did that excitement affect production at all? No, he won the Oscar and came right back to work. Whereas I would have been running around naked going, "I've got an Oscar! I've got an Oscar!" He really wasn't, he was just charming and humble about it.

How did you get the part, and who do you play? I owe Brian Helgeland, ["A Knight's Tale"'s writer/director] everything. Brian took Ron Howard at gunpoint into the screening room and showed him "A Knight's Tale." Russell Crowe plays John Nash, a Princeton mathematician who won the Nobel Prize for Economics and had a very troubled, disturbed life. I play his best friend, an English major, who nurtures him.

You'll get to use your native accent. How will the movie explain it? Right, I'm an English person studying English in America. My parents are diplomats or something. That's the conceit. The real reason is that if I played an American, they'd have to justify using an English actor.

Do you find that Hollywood studios want to typecast British actors? Back in England I play gangsters, poets, anything. But I think there's a tendency in American films for English people to only play baddies. I think it's because of the whole War of Independence thing, really. The same way that French people play good lovers in American films. Because of the debt of gratitude to Lafayette.

The whole "Knight's Tale" cast, including Heath Ledger, is rumored to be reuniting for Brian Helgeland's next movie, which is... An adaptation of "Moby Dick," with me playing Ahab! If the studio will allow us to make it. Right now they're saying that it's 'too dark.' I'm saying, "It's probably the greatest piece of American literature ever written -- I think we should make a film out of it!" It's very unpatriotic of them.

imdb.com, 16th May 2001
Paul Bettany's Socks Appeal

British actor Paul Bettany was asked to wear a sock to cover his manhood in his new film. However, he refused to wear a sock to during a nude scene because he thought the woolly garment drew attention to his manhood. The hunky actor was forced to take off his clothes in A Knight's Tale - but found the experience embarrassing. He says, "It was the first day. There were 7,000 crew members or something like that. We were in a field, you can't make that a closed set, and you are, frankly, naked. I hear rumors that some people wear socks over their stuff. But that's just silly, that's just drawing attention to yourself. It's like, I'm wearing a sock on my penis! I couldn't really do that." He continues, "And the worst thing? People come up to you and say, 'Paul, we're seeing your testicles and we can't be seeing your testicles.' Then, of course, this enormous man comes to you with a piece of gaffer's tape. And you go, 'Call me Old Mr Picky, but I'm doing it myself!'"

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imdb.com, 31st August 2001
A Knight's Challenge

A Knights Tale star Paul Bettany has the perfect answer to critics who express disdain for the blockbuster movie - he wants to challenge them to a fight. The medieval movie has been criticized for its historical inaccuracies - but British actor Bettany reckons he could take all the historians on in a punch-up. He jokes, "I imagine there will be a few het-up academics, but mostly they'll be over 50, so I reckon I could take 'em in a fist fight." But the 30-year-old star admits to knowing nothing about the work of Geoffrey Chaucer - whose novels inspired the film, and did little research for his part in the film. He confesses, "I got hold of a picture of Chaucer and it turns out he's an enormously fat, bald, bearded dwarf, so the Method approach wasn't really sitting well. I threw out any pretension of doing any research whatsoever and made it up."