I was faced with the choice of playing rugby with 20 sweaty English actors or swim in a pool with Jennifer Connelly 
He's played Chaucer in A Knight's Tale, Russell Crowe's imaginary friend in A Beautiful Mind, and London's number one gangster in, erm, Gangster No. 1. Is there no end to cheeky chappie Paul Bettany's hidden talents? Here he talks about playing ship's doctor Stephen Maturin in Master And Commander.
How does a London boy get his sea legs?
My father did the slightly redundant thing of putting me into the sea cadets to make a man of me. It clearly didn't work! I was fine with all the maritime stuff, but the comedy of it is that my character isn't. I didn't do any of the boot camp stuff that the other actors did, though.
Why not?
I had to become this solitary human being for the role. So I got myself a house miles away from everybody else and lived there for six months. And I was indeed crushing lonely! I was trying keep myself away from all the bonding stuff, which involved swimming with dolphins and playing rugby. I was faced with the choice of playing rugby with 20 sweaty English actors who I'd already spent five days with, or I could get in a car and go to Los Angeles and swim in a pool with Jennifer Connelly. It was a tough decision, but I think everyone will forgive me for making the right one! It was a case of "OK Russell, yeah, I'll be there, I'll see you Sunday". Then in the car and Vroooom!
What appealed to you about the story?
Genuinely, I just saw two men who frankly love each other. They are emotional and intellectual sustenance for each other and rely on each other for their very lives. But they have opposing objectives and the drama of their relationship is born out of that. Which is an oddity in action movies, I think. It's unique in that sense.
You worked with Russell Crowe on A Beautiful Mind. Do you now have a kind of shorthand with him?
I do, which is great. It's quite old school to work with people on more than one film. Hollywood doesn't like that. I think they think you've done it once and everybody saw it, you're just going to recreate the same thing. Which would have been embarrassing since in A Beautiful Mind I was his imaginary friend and he was insane, so it would have been ridiculous in this movie! You can be frank with each other in a way you can't when you first meet somebody. He feels absolutely able to say "Paul, I think you're being **** in that scene", and I'm absolutely able to say, "Russell, you're great in that scene."
