LOS ANGELES—In his new 3-D action film “Priest,” Paul
Bettany plays a laconic warrior with a cross tattooed on his face, a
man who channels divine power to combat the vampire menace that
terrorizes the citizens of a post-apocalyptic realm. But it’s not
entirely new territory for the English actor, whose resume includes “A
Knight’s Tale,” “A Beautiful Mind” and “Master and Commander: The Far
Side of the World.”
In last year’s “Legion,” Bettany starred as an
avenging archangel determined to protect the life of an infant as
doomsday dawns, and in the blockbuster “The Da Vinci Code,” he portrayed
a murderous albino monk whose extreme faith demands he whip himself
bloody to atone for his sins.
So what exactly is it that draws Bettany to such dark, religious-themed fare?
“It’s entirely coincidental,” Bettany, 39, said on a
recent Friday afternoon, sipping coffee at a West Hollywood hotel. “But I
swear to God, this is the last time. If they make a sequel to this, of
course I’ll do it, but it’s the last time I take on a religious theme.”
In person, Bettany is neither alienated loner nor
overwrought zealot. Even after returning from a whirlwind trip to
promote his latest movie in Moscow — where he tried fish heads, a
Russian delicacy, for the first time — the New York-based actor is
relaxed and gracious, talking excitedly about the baby he’s expecting
with wife Jennifer Connelly and his newly minted status as an action
star.
“There was a friend of mine who is in the business
who said, ‘Paul, you’re never going to be an action hero.’ I went,
‘Right,’ and went down to the gym. It was that sort of binary and
punk-like,” said the actor, who described his role in “Priest” as
“almost entirely physical. You make a few decisions about the inner life
of the character, but really, what it’s about is how he looks and he’s
got to look like an action hero. The discipline is getting up at 4
o’clock in the morning to go work out.”
“Priest,” which opens Friday, certainly gives Bettany
the opportunity to channel his inner tough guy. He plays one of an
elite team of super soldiers who helped defeat the vampires in a bloody,
violent war, but now finds himself living on the margins of a
totalitarian society controlled by the church. After his niece (Lily
Collins) is kidnapped, he teams up with a reckless lawman (Cam Gigandet)
and another acolyte (Maggie Q) to find her, defying the orders of his
superiors and risking excommunication.
As he pursues the girl, he learns that the monsters,
under the direction of a powerful new leader, are plotting to return
from exile and resume their war against humanity.
Adapted from the series of graphic novels by Min-Woo
Hyung and directed by “Legion” director Scott Charles Stewart, “Priest”
taps into not just religious but also cowboy iconography, creating a
visual landscape that looks like “Blade Runner” viewed through the
filter of the Old West. (The movie was shot traditionally in Los Angeles
and other Southern California locations over the course of 62 days last
year and was converted to 3-D in post-production.)
Bettany grew up watching John Wayne and Clint
Eastwood movies, and he said he responded to “Priest’s” tightly plotted
revenge theme. He also happens to adore vampires. Bram Stoker’s
“Dracula” was his favorite book as a child, though Justin Cronin’s epic
novel “The Passage” and Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s “The
Strain” are more recent favorites. But he’s not in love with the
heartthrob model so in vogue in pop culture these days.
“I love the mythology of vampires, I love the idea
that you can do many things with them,” he said. “You can change many
things but the one thing you probably shouldn’t change is that they’re
frightening. … You shouldn’t want to bring a vampire home to your
mum.”
Stewart said it was absolutely his intention to make
the creatures frightening, and having an actor who could bring the right
kind of grounded intensity to the role of a man who’s devoted his life
to battling them was critical.
“I looked at ‘Priest’ as more of a science-fiction
Western and when thinking about that character, I thought of Paul
because he kind of reminded me always of this young Eastwood,” Stewart
said. “He’s got this really chiseled face and this thousand-yard stare
and he’s lean and that just felt so appropriate.”
If all goes well for the Screen Gems release, Bettany
will be donning his priestly vestments for a sequel very soon. If not,
though, the actor says he’ll be happy to resume making smaller-budgeted
movies like “Margin Call,” a drama due out this fall about the financial
crisis that was shot in New York in little more than two weeks and
almost entirely on a former trading floor.
“Seventeen days,” Bettany said, emphasizing the
brevity of the shoot. “Part of the reason I decided to make the movie
was I decided that was impossible. It’s brutal, the schedule.”
He said he’s intentionally toggled between big studio
movies and more rarefied indie fare — “They feel like a different
profession,” Bettany says of the two filmmaking styles — and he’s
content not to work more often because he treasures time with his
family.
“If you get yourself to a point in your career where
you can make a bunch of money really quickly and then you just keep on
working and in 20 years’ time you realize, somebody else raised my kids,
you lost,” said Bettany, who has a 7-year-old son, Stellan, with
Connelly and is raising her 13-year-old son from a previous
relationship, Kai, with the actress. “That would be miserable. That
would be many more times more miserable than missing out on a couple of
great opportunities.”
The lanky blond with the haunted features paused for a
moment, lost in thought. Then he added, “I shall endeavor to be making a
lot more smaller movies from now on.”
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