Paul Bettany names his five favourite films
Depending on your preference, your last sighting of Paul Bettany would have been in Marvel / Disney+’s Wandavision or BBC’s A Very British Scandal. Either way, it would have been on the small screen back in 2021. Luckily, with production well underway for Here, the upcoming feature from director Robert Zemeckis and screenwriter Eric Roth, we should hopefully see the British actor on the cinema screens in 2024. With his forthcoming feature in mind, let’s take a look at Bettany’s five favourite films of all time.
Starting off with a David Lean classic, Brief Encounter is a title that most probably sits highly on many a filmmaker’s list. With a screenplay by Noël Coward, the 1945 film tells the heartwrenching story of a married woman who falls helplessly in love with another man. “It’s just an exquisite movie,” Bettany explains. “I think I see it at least once a year, and it’s so ahead of its time in so many ways.” With its emotionally complex and nuanced central female character, it’s easy to agree with him. “It’s the first movie I can think of — maybe I’m wrong — where a woman has an affair and is the hero of the piece, and isn’t vilified by the piece.”
Another iconic 1940s film secures its place on Bettany’s top five: It’s A Wonderful Life. A riff on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, it features Jimmy Stewart as a bank clerk whose attempted suicide is interrupted by the Guardian Angel Clarence trying to earn its wings. Granted a divine insight into what life for his friends and family would have looked like, had he never been born, Stewart’s character realises the worth of his own life and feels a renewed sense of gratitude. It’s widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, and Bettany agrees: “I love that movie. Again, what’s wrong with that movie? Not a f—ing lot, right? Really lean piece of socialist storytelling that’s just gorgeous.”
Leanness and the economy of storytelling go far in Bettany’s books, as demonstrated by his unadulterated love for Martin Scorsese’s 1980 Oscar-winning Raging Bull. “I defy anybody to point out one thing that’s wrong with it. It’s just perfect. There’s nothing in that movie that could be cut out that would make it better. It just feels so lean and perfect. Every moment doesn’t lose sight of what it’s about.” Following Robert De Niro as real-life boxer Jake LaMotta, the biopic depicts the highs and lows of the troubled Italian American athlete, spanning twenty years of his life. Known for his unrestrained emotion, LaMotta’s aggression and jealousy ultimately prove to be his undoing. As Bettany puts it, “he’s just an animal, and it’s the threat of violence the whole time. It’s amazing and beautiful.”
Seven years later came another great biopic, Stephen Frears’ Prick Up Your Ears. Based on the life of the famous British playwright Joe Orton, the script is written by none other than Alan Bennet, whose own experience of being homosexual in 20th-century England provides the film with a raw but deeply nuanced depiction of the forbidden and fatal love between Orton and his lover in the 1960s. The film showcases an early performance from Gary Oldman, which Bettany greatly admires. “That is another extraordinary performance that feels so total and complete, you know?”
It’s no surprise for an actor to cherish a film based on the performances within it, and the final choice in Bettany’s top five is no different. Four years after My Left Foot in, actor Daniel Day-Lewis reunited with director Jim Sheridan for In the Name of the Father in 1993. An account of the wrongful convictions of Gerry Conlon and the ‘Guildford Four’, accused of orchestrating the Guildford Bombing in 1974, the film presents a brutal and graphic portrayal of English police brutality and a gross subversion of justice. Met with overwhelming praise, the film earned several Oscar nominations, with one for Daniel Day-Lewis in ‘Best Actor’. As Bettany explains, “Here was an English person, making such a complete and visceral transformation in character that you just went, ‘Oh my God, we’re allowed to do that sort of thing, too?’ That felt really empowering.”
Paul Bettany’s five favourite films:
- Brief Encounter
- It’s A Wonderful Life
- Raging Bull
- Prick Up Your Ears
- Name of the Father
