Paul Bettany

Persistently striving to compile such a fabulous resume consisting of various excellent theatrical and screen stints, Paul Bettany successfully has carved his niche in the forefront of Hollywood film industry to keep shining through as one of the lauded thespians of his generation. Hailed from a family with strong artistic background, he was born on May 27, 1971 in a northwest London district called Harlesden to stage actor Thande Bettany and Anne Kettle, an aspiring singer whose primary job is a secretary at a drama school in England. Only spending nine years of his life there, the kid then was taken to settle in a village of Brookmans Park, Hertfordshire where he later grew up as a teen who initially seemed to have little ambition for anything aside from his large interest in music, which sharply contrasted with his lacking enthusiasm for school subjects. Fortunately, this unfocused life of his began to find its direction by the age of 19 when the blue-eyed guy entered London Drama Centre in Chalk Farm and unexpectedly found himself fell heavily into acting, just like his father had experienced before.

Ultimately fixed his mind to pursue a fine career in the field, Paul did not waste much time to commence his journey and stepped straight into work, making his professional stage debut in 1993 through the West End revival of "An Inspector Calls" under superb direction of Stephen Daldry. As the play turned out to be a success, he subsequently was invited to take part in its ten-month tour around U.S. and Australia, but the young man boldly turned down the offer to instead join the Royal Shakespeare Company in which he managed to appear in its productions of "Richard III" also "Julius Caesar" among others. Honed his craft in the company for one season, he afterwards moved to Royal Court Theatre while also built his path in entertainment industry with performances in either small screen features, like "Sharpe's Waterloo" (1997) and "Coming Home" (1998), or big ones, such as "Bent" (1997) and "The Land Girls" (1998).

Decided to concentrate entirely on silver screen production by the beginning of the third millennium, Paul satisfyingly made his way to pop up in several more movies during the year 2000, particularly that of "Gangster No. 1" in which he delightfully landed his first leading role accompanied by David Thewlis. With the growing brilliant skills he had displayed throughout, it was not really hard for him to gradually garner larger notice from the moviegoers and finally come to the attention of Hollywood filmmaker Brian Helgeland who eagerly included him in his 2001 effort of "A Knight's Tale" despite the producers' disapproval. So impressed Helgeland with his talent that he willingly helped the blond actor to struggle for a position in American film industry, circulating his audition tape around his peers, including renowned director Ron Howard.

Shared the same good impression as Helgeland had grown earlier, Howard promptly cast Paul to portray Charles, the charismatic, inspirational roommate of John Forbes Nash, Jr. played by Russell Crowe in his acclaimed biopic, "A Beautiful Mind" (2001). Not only the movie was a huge critical success, but it also scored tremendously in the box-office, collecting over 313 million U.S dollar during its international run, undoubtedly led this Gemini guy to sudden widespread recognition besides brought him to bigger opportunity to shine in Hollywood. His status rose even higher when he again teamed up with Crowe to film "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" (2003) as he wonderfully nabbed a nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role category at the 2004 BAFTA Awards, giving clear evidence that he indeed possesses enough decent talent to earn such accolade.

Moving rather steadily afterwards, Paul kept maintaining his acting knack finely for he continuously gained praise from critics in his subsequent pictures of "Wimbledon" (2004) and "Firewall" (2006), though those two movies themselves received mixed reviews plus only scored moderately in their commercial results. Thing apparently still ran relatively well for him next as he joined Tom Hanks, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, also Audrey Tautou to make the highly-anticipated picture of "The Da Vinci Code", released on May 19, 2006. As controversial as the original novel by Dan Brown from which it was adapted, the movie remarkably pulled in over $758 million worldwide despite some protests and mixed reviews. This no doubt contributed largely to his path in the film industry, smoothening his way to secure more high-profile stints like those in period drama "he Young Victoria" and fantasy adventure "Inkheart", both set for 2008 releases.

Taking a look into his private life, Paul had been known to date actress Laura Fraser and Emily Mortimer for some time before he met Jennifer Connelly when filming "A Beautiful Mind." Happily married to Connelly on January 1, 2003 in a Scottish ceremony, he thus moved to Brooklyn with the dark-haired actress and her son, Kai, to later welcome the birth of his first child, Stellan, on August 5 the same year.