Amadeus star Paul Bettany reveals how a fan's selfie intruded on a tragic family moment

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

Paul Bettany is far from being too cool for Yule. “I love Christmas so much,” he enthuses in advance of the festive celebrations at his home in the USA. “Our Christmas Day is a very English affair with crackers and turkey, and then, when people start showing up after Boxing Day, the party just continues. Last year we had 40 people.”

Bettany, co-star of Amadeus, Sky Atlantic’s five-part adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play, lives with his wife, actor Jennifer Connolly, in a timber house in rural Vermont, New England, where “it snows every year”. So, the 54-year-old London-born actor will be having a picturesque Christmas – but also a loud one. “I have a band room with drums and piano and PA system and loads of guitars. Lots of people come up and play. We do a gig on New Year’s Eve.”

You might be thinking, rather him than me. But Bettany likes to go at things full throttle, whether that’s entertaining friends at Christmas or in his performance as the scheming court composer Salieri in Amadeus, who dedicates his life to destroying Mozart.

It’s one of those roles where Bettany, who has lived in America since 2003, pops back to the UK to remind us just how good he is. He did it before in 2021 when he played the alcoholic Duke of Argyll in the period drama A Very British Scandal. Now he’s facing off with Will Sharpe’s Mozart in 18th-century Vienna; an arrangement Bettany is charmed by.

“I have enormous admiration for Will. He’s funny, gentle and kind – an attractive combination and rare. Usually, actors are working out how they can triumph against the opposition rather than how to make each other better.”

Bettany is a thoughtful, compelling actor; even as android superhero The Vision in the Marvel universe where, since 2015, he has been wearing a catsuit and firing lasers out of his forehead. He does this so convincingly I ask him to explain what it feels like. “I have no frame of reference for laser beams coming out of my head,” he says, gently reminding me that, thanks to computer graphics, it isn’t really happening.

Appearing in films like A Beautiful Mind, Master and Commander and The Da Vinci Code means Bettany has been well known in the US for a long time, yet he finds fame hard to talk about.

“The things that are great about it outweigh those that are not so great. I do wonder what it’s like for somebody as famous as Brad Pitt. But, for me, without even noticing it, you get a good table in a restaurant and people are nicer to you at airports. So, you tend to meet people on their best behaviour. But, when you meet people on their worst behaviour, it’s sometimes a little alienating.”

He has an example. In 2015, he got the news that his father Thane (also an actor) was dying. “I remember getting the call, that I needed to fly over to be with my dad. I was on the phone, trying to process this information and crying, when somebody came up and took a selfie with me. They just hadn’t noticed what was happening and couldn’t see that part of me in that moment. So that bit’s weird, but there are great things as well. The life that it has afforded me, my children and my wife is extraordinary.”

Bettany and Connolly have a 12-year-old daughter Agnes and son Stellan, 22, and a son Kai, 27, from Connolly’s earlier relationship with photographer David Dugan. They’ll all be in Vermont, adding to the noise. “There are loads of kids, it gets crazy,” he says of the upcoming shindig. “And it’s a very inebriated affair. Lots of sledding.” Inebriated sledding? There are things that could go wrong with that.

“We’re out in the middle of nowhere,” he concedes. “But it’s a lucky house. Nothing bad ever happens.”

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