Masterful

Britain's fastest-rising Hollywood star adopts a hoarse whisper to avoid waking the baby. 'We'll go out and grab a coffee.'

He picks up a packet of Marlboros, pulls on his jacket and delivers a loving peck to the sleeping infant.

Spending time with Paul Bettany is a bit like meeting up with one of your old mates from the pub.

The one you haven't seen since he got married and had a kid. He's the boy from Harlesden who got the big promotion and married a really nice girl.

Except that Mrs Bettany is Jennifer Connelly, an Oscar winner for A Beautiful Mind and one of the most gorgeous and most in demand women in Hollywood.

And her husband has a growing reputation as one of the most versatile actors in the business, whose performances in the 10-times Oscar nominated Master And Commander and the small British film The Heart Of Me have just earned him the Best Actor award at the Evening Standard British Film Awards.

'Well,' he grins, 'awards are good for the family business. It's like being made employee of the month.'

Master And Commander reunited him with Russell Crowe for a second time after A Beautiful Mind. Bettany, 33, took the role of ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin, a lofty intellectual amid all those jolly jack tars.

He prepared for the role with commendable rigour. 'I had to look like I could perform the medical procedures.

'Maturin is a solitary human being, so I got myself a house away from everybody on a cliff top. Did that help? I was definitely lonely.

'I was so lonely that, by the time I got to work, I just wanted to talk to everybody, so I'm not sure if these things work.'

He describes his character's relationship with Crowe's Captain Jack Aubrey as, 'A sort of marriage, I suppose.'

But then, he says, 'Acting is an awful lot like sex. It's enormous fun to do, but quite embarrassing to talk about afterwards.'

While the two men have had their differences, Bettany understands the pressures on his co-star and seems relieved not to be part of the madness.

'Russell's very upfront. He speaks his mind and that doesn't sit well with the asinine world of Hollywood. If you took that away from him and made him media-friendly - well, that's not what people pay to see.'

Connelly and Bettany, on the other hand, are one of those red-carpet couples who seem destined to spend married life shimmering across the celebrity pages of glossy magazines.

The reality at this precise moment is rather different - Bettany is playing house-husband in a trailer parked on a windswept and bitterly cold corner of Toronto that is doubling for New York, while his wife shoots her new horror film, Dark Water.

The couple have a six-year-old son, Kai, from Connelly's previous relationship, while baby Stellan - named after his best friend, actor Stellan Skarsgård - was born last year.

They live in New York most of the time to be close to Kai's father, 'Although I miss home. A lot,' says Bettany.

'I miss London and my friends. My life is changing nappies at the moment. We have two children and anybody who has two children knows you don't go out that much.'

Still, they are both genuine A-list stars, along with everything that brings.

Although it's the ravishing Connelly, also 33, who still attracts most of the attention, her husband - a tall, gangly blond with unruly hair and eyes of blue ice - is catching up fast.

'It's not something you really think about when you are at home together,' he admits. 'And then you are on the red carpet and someone is saying, "And what are you wearing?" Los Angeles, he says, is the worst.

'Because of Jennifer, and because we're not there much, so when we do go there it's all fresh for the paparazzi.

I've learned that it's best just to stand there and let them take loads of pictures. Jennifer knows that whole world much better than me. I get angry, while she lets go.'

He's never been fond of the Hollywood machine. 'Studios don't make dramas anymore. I think Master And Commander was the one drama Fox made last year.'

Ask him for the worst film he can think of, and Bettany replies, 'Forrest Gump. Repulsive. You know, life is not a box of chocolates.

I made this little film, The Heart Of Me, and when we came out of the premiere in New York, there was this huge poster down the side of a skyscraper for X-Men 2. How can you compete with that?'

Bettany's career has been a slow burn. His dad was the actor Thane Bettany, who moved the family from Harlesden to become a drama coach at a girls school in Potters Bar.

After leaving school, Bettany became a busker on Westminster Bridge and then studied for three years at the London Drama Centre in Chalk Farm. Early stage successes saw him spending a year with the Royal Shakespeare Company, but his career really took off with Paul McGuigan's acclaimed Gangster No. 1 three years ago.

Since then he has hardly missed a step. Stripped down for a memorably naked Chaucer in the comedy A Knight's Tale won him widespread recognition in the US, followed by A Beautiful Mind, playing what turns out to be a figment of the troubled mind of mathematician John Nash, played by the Oscar-winning Crowe.

(Bettany first met Connelly, who played Nash's wife, on the set four years ago, but says the relationship began much later, pointing out, 'Since I didn't actually exist we didn't have any scenes together.')

Bettany's latest film opens next week. Dogville is a three-hour marathon costarring Nicole Kidman and directed by the eccentric Danish film-maker Lars von Trier, best known for Breaking The Waves.

It is a twisted portrait of American small-town life that Bettany describes as 'Like Frank Capra and It's a Wonderful life, except that It's a Shit Life'.

Filmed on an almost empty sound stage, it was shot in what Bettany calls, 'Eight enormously long weeks in the most depressing place I have ever been to in my life.'

Later this year comes the more traditional Centre Court drama, Wimbledon, which also marked a turning point in his career in another way. 'When I was making Wimbledon, Jennifer had to go back to New York, because Kai had just started school, and it was six weeks of hell.

For her it was a ghastly six weeks of holding one baby and cooking for the other child. And for me I felt I was just missing everything.'

The couple have now more or less decided they will never again film at the same time. Bettany is considering a number of roles, but can afford to take his time.

He sounds relieved that there is unlikely to be a sequel to Master And Commander.

'We're contractually obliged to do another one, but, at $135 million, it's probably too expensive to make.' So what will he do? 'I've no plans except to do lots of different stuff.'

Dogville opens Fri 13 Feb