Love-All, Actually

Hit or miss, Wimbledon is the film that will mark Paul Bettany's official elevation to the ranks of Hollywood leading man. He first caught the eye in low budget British movie Gangster No 1 and then as Chaucer in A Knight's Tale. Most notably, he's played second fiddle twice to Russell Crowe - in A Beautiful Mind and the naval epic Master And Commander.

Tinseltown is waiting to see if he can carry a film, namely Wimbledon, in which the distinctly non-athletic actor plays a would-be tennis champion.

Kirsten Dunst gets top billing over Bettany because (a) she's American and (b) she's played Spider-Man's squeeze twice on screen now. But the movie belongs to Bettany. His is the leading role in this romantic comedy from Working Title, the British company behind the Bridget Jones films and Love Actually.

The relaxed and charming Bettany is aware that people are saying that Wimbledon - which has become known, inevitably, as Love-All Actually - will decide whether he's the perennial sidekick or genuine leading role in the future. "A lot has been made of that in the US but I think that's because they don't get to see many European movies," he says.

He's happy to ignore the responsibility which being the star brings with it, claiming in his self-deprecating way that he's "an actor and natural blond and incredibly shallow".

Like far too few movie stars, he doesn't take himself too seriously. He's never had much of a career plan. "It's a small one, and that's to do a lot of different things. They always want actors to do the same thing. I get bored very quickly and don't want to become a performing monkey."

His laid-back attitude shouldn't make you overlook the fact that he takes his work seriously, and trained for months to look like a tennis champ. This was all the more difficult as he's not into sports. His former PE teacher would be shocked by the whole idea. "I'm not driven like that. I did play football at school but, to be honest, I didn't really care whether the other school won or not," he says. "I never really felt that commitment to anything apart from myself."

Bettany previously learnt to play the cello for his role in as a ship's surgeon in naval epic Master And Commander. So what skill would he like to learn next? "I have no interest in golf because there's no defence," he says. "It can't be a sport without defence. How can it be a sport if there's no one coming at you? There should be heavy opposition for golfers, tackles and things.

"The difficulty of learning something for a film is that you only pretend to learn. I can play four pieces of music on a cello you might not want to listen to. You would be able to tell the tune but it sounds like I'm doing something enormously suspicious to a squirrel.

"Also in the that film, I played a doctor so you probably wouldn't want me to operate on you."

He likes watching tennis, but there aren't many tennis players from inner city Harlesden, London, where he grew up. He has "no interest in sports whatsoever in terms of playing them", he insists, adding: "I don't really have much interest in sweating really, except for a few things I'm not going to go into."

He was coached by Pat Cash to look as though he was a good player. The ball was mostly added later as a computer-generated effect. "Yes, it was a stretch," he says of learning tennis. "Too many actors talk about how difficult it is doing things but we were bankrolled by Working Title and Universal, and Pat Cash can play a bit so you were helped every step of the way."

If tennis was difficult, the character of Peter Colt was just as hard to play because he's basically a nice bloke. "It's easier if you're playing someone who's got mess, something you can grab on to. Peter has low self-esteem but is an uncluttered, simple bloke - and I found playing a simple bloke surprisingly difficult," he admits.

Playing tennis was harder than playing his first romantic lead. "It was a mammoth undertaking. You suddenly realise when you go to Monte Carlo and see these people playing so beautifully and their bodies so organised because they've been doing it since they were four years old. It was at that point that I got a little bit scared of the whole thing."

He has no notion of the pressure to win put on a British player like Tim Henman. "I can't imagine dedicating my life to it. These people stay fit for so long. I squared it by telling myself I had ten months of eating boiled chicken and could get through that."

Bettany is married to Oscar-winning American actress Jennifer Connelly and they have a son, Stellan. They divide their time between New York and London. "Like any couple we come home and talk about work. She really supports me during my films and I try to undermine her during hers," he says.

"Just recently, she was making a film and I was looking after the baby upwards of 12 hours a day in a trailer in Toronto, where it was colder than on Mars. I could tell she needed comforting and me to talk to her as an adult - and I just had the impulse to sing 'The wheels on the bus go round and round...'."

* Wimbledon (12A) opens in cinemas tomorrow.

Published: 23/09/2004