By then he’d also made A Beautiful Mind, in which he starred with Jennifer Connelly and Russell Crowe, who both won Oscars for their performances. Bettany would play with Kai, Jennifer’s son with photographer David Dugan, in her trailer. But there was no on-set romance.
‘Jennifer and I were both with other people,’ he says. ‘We’d been speaking on the phone throughout the year when 9/11 happened. I was in Italy and found myself ringing her again and again and again. I thought: “What the hell’s going on here? I’m probably in love with this woman.” It took a terror attack to realise.’
Bettany jokes that he married up with Connelly because she studied at Yale and Stanford, and is multilingual. But the fact is they share a passion for leading an unstarry life. They were married on January 1, 2003, in Scotland with eight people present. Minutes after, they got drunk and played Twister in their pyjamas.
‘People think we’re such a Hollywood couple and they say: “Goodness, they’ve been together for eight years,” which in Hollywood terms is about 40 years, like dog years. Or they look at us askance because we’re still together.’
They even survived making their second film together, co-starring in Creation in 2009 with Bettany playing Charles Darwin and Connelly his wife Emma.
Despite being constantly in demand, they work alternately so they can be together and have never been apart for longer than two weeks. ‘You’ve got to make sacrifices,’ says Bettany. ‘Rather than ride roughshod, we have to listen.’
As well as 14-year-old Kai, the couple have a son, Stellan, eight, and daughter Agnes Lark, who is four months old.
Bettany wanted children desperately. He has said he feels saved by them. ‘Having children is lovely. What else are you going to do with your life, really?’
He’ll bring his family to London if his next big movie comes off. ‘I can’t say yet what it is, but I’ll be over the moon because I miss London. I live in New York, but we won’t always be there.’
Source: Dailymail.co.uk
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