Paul Bettany: after playing a specter in A Beautiful Mind, this actor keeps on delivering haunting performances

Best known for playing a schizophrenic's imagined companion in A Beautiful Mind (2001), Paul Bettany's current hot streak is anything but illusory. The 32-year-old Brit has reteamed with Beautiful Mind star Russell Crowe in the recently released blockbuster sea adventure Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, and in 2004 he'll be showcasing his versatility in a trio of highly anticipated films: Dogville, Lars von Trier's spring release, with Nicole Kidman and Stellan Skarsgard (his interviewer here), the 14th-century drama The Reckoning, and the romantic comedy Wimbledon, with Kirsten Dunst. Offscreen, Bettany's reunited with another Beautiful Mind cast mate, Jennifer Connelly, whom he married in January and who gave birth to their son in August.

STELLAN SKARSGARD: Paul! How are you doing?

PAUL BETTANY: Hey, mate. I'm terribly well, thanks. So, it's just you, me, a tape recorder, and the readers.

SS: [laughs] Where are you?

PB: I'm in London, missing my wife and my baby very badly. We're trying to split our time between London and New York.

SS: Mm-hmm. You'll have to bear with me because I've never interviewed anybody before. I'll ask you your favorite color later, but since you're an Englishman and thus blessed with irony, I think it's important we tell the readers that everything we say that they don't like is just irony--we actually mean the opposite. [both laugh] I want to ask you about Master and Commander. You shot it mostly in Rosarito [Mexico], no? That's where all the kids from Southern California go for weekends to throw up.

PB: That's right. I had this beautiful house there, the back of which was completely made of glass and overlooked the sea. For amusement I'd watch all the drunken kids stumbling along the edge of the cliffs.

SS: Who else was in the film?

PB: Mr. Russell Crowe, who else. I made another picture with him before, you know. It was nice not being an imaginary character this time.

SS: And it must have also been fun working with Peter Weir [Master and Commander's director].

PB: Yeah, the whole thing was fantastic. Peter is one of my heroes, and it was great being with a bunch of actors who took the work, not themselves, seriously. It could've been a terribly macho experience. I was kind of frightened of these group-bonding exercises they had scheduled--

SS:--Like a boot camp for the actors?

PB: Yeah, but what they scheduled turned out to be stuff like swimming with dolphins.

SS: Which is much more up your alley.

PB: Yes, it's much more up my strasse [German for "street"].

SS: You're not a very macho man, are you?

PB: Well, I've just become macho, actually, for the tennis film I'm making [Wimbledon]. I even go to the gym.

SS: You do what?

PB: Yeah, it's quite extraordinary. I'm becoming everything I never wanted to be--I go to the gym, I work out, I watch what I eat. Before that, I'd been to a gym only once, at which time I passed out during the introduction, when they were showing me the treadmill.

SS: Will I recognize you?

PB: Yes, you'll recognize me by my charming voice and good looks.

SS: I have a confession to make: I have also gone to the gym, because of the sword fighting I'm doing [for King Arthur, due out in 2004]. I'm playing Cerdic, a Saxon leader who chops up people throughout the film and then gets chopped up himself.

PB: Excellent! Have you been chopped up yet?

SS: No, I think Clive [Owen, who plays Arthur] will chop me up either Friday or Monday. [both laugh] But with all this working out, my wife doesn't recognize my body.

PB: Well, my wife hates it. She says I'm not what she bought. [Skarsgard laughs] And I tend to watch tennis videos, and she's so bored with them. I watch Andre Agassi like pornography: I hear my wife come in the room, and I quickly switch off the video. I'm going back to chain-smoking, out-of-breath parts after this.

SS: Now, I haven't seen Master and Commander and you're currently shooting Wimbledon, but are these roles taking you away from the sort of cold, blue-eyed guy you played in Gangster No. 1 [2000], or have they tried to get you to play that same kind of character?

PB: Well, as you know, sometimes there are a lot of people with very little imagination who decide what parts we get. After I did Gangster No. 1, everybody wanted me to play killers and psychopaths, and after I did A Knight's Tale [2001], everybody wanted me to play lounge lizards and charming lugs. There's always a fight, but I've been lucky that people have allowed me to do lots of different stuff, because acting the same character every time would make me feel like a monkey.

SS: It's often a problem that they don't trust actors to be able to act, isn't it? So, when you choose a project, apart from the fact that you're broke and you're offered tons of money, what is most important to you--the film or the role?

PB: The film--if I'm lucky enough to get a choice. It's only recently that I'm starting to be able to make choices, which is frightening if you're a glass-is-half-empty person like I am. The first 10 minutes after getting a job is great, but then you're like, "Oh, no, I actually have to do some work!" and it's dreadful. That was the thing with Wimbledon: I was thinking "It's a romantic comedy, which will be nice after doing an action movie," but then I said to myself, "Wait, I don't know how to play tennis!" I'm looking at these players moving around the court like dancers, and it occurred to me that by signing up for this role I was actually saying, "Yes, I'd love to play Rudolf Nureyev. How long do I have to learn ballet?"