City boy Paul Bettany preferred a Hollywood swimming pool to fooling about with the lads away from the filming of Master and Commander, but loved renewing his screen double act with Russell Crowe, as he tells Steve Pratt.

British actor Paul Bettany didn't become one of the lads and join in weekend games of rugby organised by co-star Russell Crowe while making Master And Commander on location in Mexico.

He had better things to do with his time away from the cameras. "The choice was playing rugby with 20 sweaty actors I'd been with for five days, or getting in a car, driving to LA and swim in a pool with Jennifer Connelly," he explains.

Think about it: getting muddy or getting romantic with a beautiful Hollywood actress? For Bettany, the decision wasn't hard to make.

He and Oscar-winner Connelly - who met while making A Beautiful Mind, which also starred Crowe - are now married and parents of a son, Stellan (named after an actor friend).

Not that he wanted to avoid Crowe's company. The pair are good friends after making two movies together, although Bettany adds: "He lives 27 hours flying time away so it's difficult to go out for a drink."

Bettany, who began his career on stage in An Inspector Calls and with the Royal Shakespeare Company, first came to film-makers' attention in the lead in Gangster No 1 and followed that with roles in A Knight's Tale and Heart Of Me.

He's cast in Master And Commander as the ship's doctor and biologist Dr Stephen Maturin, whose relationship - and musical partnership on violin and cello - is at the heart of the drama.

"It's quite old school to work with people twice. Hollywood doesn't like it now. They think you're going to recreate the same thing," says Bettany about working again with Crowe, while pointing out their relationship is very different to A Beautiful Mind where "I was his imaginary friend and he was insane".

There was a certain amount of resistance to the two getting together again for Master And Commander, not just from the studio but director Peter Weir and the stars themselves. "We worked so hard to produce a different dynamic, a relationship with a nature.. I think that all the cons are far outweighed by the pros. You can be frank with each other in a way you can't when you first meet somebody," says Bettany.

Virtually all the movie takes place on the ocean. Cast and crew spent ten days spent filming at sea and a further 90 days aboard a replica boat in a giant tank in Mexico.

Bettany had no worries about finding his sea legs. "My father put me into the sea cadets to make a man of me. I was fine with all that. The comedy of that is my character isn't," he says.

He also had to pass as a ship's doctor, visiting the Royal College of Surgeons in London to learn about medical procedures of the time, so that he had a grasp of how to perform them for the cameras. He also had a go at dissection during a visit to the Scripps Institute of Oceanographic Study to gain information about pre-Darwin knowledge of insects, animals and fish.

The most difficult sequence was the one in which Maturin operates on himself, using a mirror. "I spent five hours in make-up and came out with a prosthetic stomach that could bleed when you cut it," he says.

He was part of a small film unit that became the first feature to shoot on the Galapagos Islands, with its unique plant and animal species.

Bettany isn't a natural naturalist. "I loathe bugs because they scamper and scuttle and other sc-words. I'm a city boy and feel out of place in the park. The whole thing was very alien to me. I fell asleep on the beach and woke up next to this baby sea lion. It was sort of snuggled into me. You're suddenly aware you're part of nature, and you can either help or hinder it."

Bettany is also refreshing among movie star interviewees in that he doesn't take himself too seriously, and remains down-to-earth. He hears too many actors talking about the art of acting during the promotion of a movie and clearly thinks they're often talking a load of rubbish.

"You were paid an enormous amount of money to get dressed up and get a bit wet. Too much of the acting happens after the film comes out," he says.

"The thing about acting is it's a lot like sex in the fact that it's fun to do and you feel fantastic during the process, but talking about it afterwards is a bit embarrassing."

As well as looking competent as a doctor, he had to play the cello to accompany Captain Crowe on violin. He doesn't sound enamoured of his instrument. "The guitar is a great instrument because it has frets, and the cello is a stupid one," he says.

"We worked hard on this cello thing. It represents nine months work but only snippets are shown. You might recognise the tune but wouldn't want to be in the room."

The actors formed a band and played for pleasure, with Billy Boyd, Tony Dolan, Bryan Dick and Bettany on guitar and Crowe on drums. "We played mostly Clash songs really loudly if not really well," he says.

Published: ??/??/2003