Good guy gone bad

The Da Vinci Code is even more of a departure from Wimbledon for the actor. Though the finished film has yet to be screened, Bettany - taking fourth or fifth billing behind Tom Hanks, Ian McKellen, Audrey Tautou et al - is said to be chilling as the albino monk who stops at nothing to protect the religious order of Opus Dei.

He has been described as the kind of actor who "sails that edge between an intimidating man who's quite frightening if he wants to be and a really gentle giant".

Bettany comes from a bohemian bourgeois background. His mother was a singer and his father an actor (he was in North Sea Hijack with Roger Moore, and an episode of Dr Who) before becoming a drama teacher. Moving from London to the country with his family, the young Bettany dropped out of school and left home, at 16, when his eight-year-old brother died in an accident.

He has given a blunt precis of the two-year period following, which obviously scarred him: "I lost my brother and ended up on the streets and I was busking and a little unwell and felt like I couldn't understand anybody when they spoke to me because this thing in my life was so huge."

But he found his feet again after enrolling in drama school in Chalk Farm and when he finished training, he quickly scored roles in plays and TV series such as Sharpe's Waterloo and David Copperfield (2000). Film work in Bent, Land Girls, Gangster No 1 and Dead Babies followed.

His Hollywood breakthrough came in 2001 with a memorable comic turn as Chaucer in A Knight's Tale opposite Heath Ledger. He was naked in virtually every scene he was in, and was the funniest element of the film. With A Beautiful Mind and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (for which he won an Evening Standard Best Actor award in 2003) both costarring Russell Crowe, he made a name for himself on an international level.

He met Jennifer Connelly on the set of A Beautiful Mind, made by his Da Vinci Code director Ron Howard, and they married in December 2002, in Scotland. She already had a child from a previous relationship, and the two had another, Stellan, named after Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgaard, in August 2003.

"Fatherhood has entirely altered how I go about everything," he says. "Before I worked and worked and worked. It has entirely changed the rhythm of how I move through my life. Being a part of a family is clearly most important, now and for ever."

The family is based in Brooklyn, New York, an increasingly trendy neighbourhood to which Heath Ledger has also just moved with wife Michelle Williams. "I am furious," Bettany jokes. "If stars keep coming to Brooklyn, it will be a complete nightmare. We've got to get rid of that riff-raff. No, really, it's a wonderful place to live and it feels as European a place as any part of America. I feel very at home there."

He and Connelly have worked out a system which allows both of them to work selectively while remaining together as a family. When Stellan was born, Bettany took 18 months off, and after he completes promotional duties on Da Vinci Code in November, it will be the Oscar-winning Connelly's turn, and he will take another 12 months, to accompany her and the children to South Africa, Mozambique and Iceland, while she makes The Blood Diamond, an epic adventure with Leonardo DiCaprio.

"Scheduling is the only tension in our relationship," he says. "Other than that, we are entirely blessed. It's an incredible life and I think you just have to keep your eye on the main privilege - which I've discovered is the privilege of being paid too much money and being able to take time off. I should never say that again out loud ..."

Bettany's candour is refreshing. He has no time for keeping discreet about the "game" of Hollywood, as he calls it. "I try to knock as much of the nonsense out of it as possible. With that honesty comes a sort of freedom. I have never been frightened of that sort of thing and probably don't want the same things that people who keep quiet about things do. As long as Ron Howard is still ringing up saying, 'Paul, do you want to be in a film of a book that's sold 60 million copies', I'm as happy as Larry."

He is bracing himself for the worldwide attention that will come at him for The Da Vinci Code, a book clearly close to many millions of hearts.

"The real surprise for me was the nature of the part I play. The assassin is often on his own so I would turn up on my own and there'd be me and a crew and the director, and it felt like a small, intimate personal independent movie. I know it's not going to be like that, but that's what it felt like for me."

As for working with Harrison Ford, Bettany, who was five when Ford was shooting Star Wars, as ever, is nothing but droll. "It was the first Paul Bettany movie he'd ever been in and he was understandably a little nervous but I tried to allay all his fears. He's an extraordinary man - he did his own stunts. I can guarantee that when I'm 63, I'm not going to be throwing myself through a window.

"I intend to be a little more ordinary at that age, and slightly fatter and more drunk."

Ironically, days after the interview, I read that Bettany might play The Joker in the next Christopher Nolandirected Batman film opposite Christian Bale. It seems that he just can't resist playing the bad guy.

Firewall opens on 31 March. The Da Vinci Code opens on 19 May.