Paul Bettany has an emotional reason for not rewatching one of his breakout film projects over the years — he misses his costar, Heath Ledger, too much.
Bettany made the touching revelation during an appearance over the weekend at L.A. Comic Con alongside his WandaVision and The Avengers costar Elizabeth Olsen. During the panel’s Q&A, an audience member asked the star about A Knight’s Tale, and if fans ever approach him and ask him to repeat some of his most iconic lines from the ending of the 2001 film, which jump-started his career in Hollywood.
“It was a really long time ago,” Bettany admitted. “It was like another lifetime ago. And people do come up sometimes, people come up to me on the street and quote things at me, and I literally can’t remember. I can’t remember any of it.”
The actor continued, “I saw [the film] when it first came out. I’ve never seen it again since. There are lots of reasons for that, and just one of them is that I miss Heath too much.”
The Dark Knight Oscar-winner Ledger died in 2008 at age 28.
Bettany played English poet and writer Geoffrey Chaucer in the medieval action-comedy, which starred Ledger as William Thatcher, a peasant squire, fueled by his desire for food and glory, who forges a new identity for himself as a knight when his master dies. Mark Addy, Rufus Sewell, Shannyn Sossamon, Alan Tudyk, and Laura Fraser also star in the Brian Helgeland-helmed film.
Bettany previously talked about working with the late Ledger in an interview with Vulture in 2021.
“I can tell you that he just had a light that shined off him. He was a movie star, you know? Just immediately, you met him, and he shone, as you lot say, and it was very hard not to fall in love with him — I think for anybody. He was a very playful, joyous spirit.”
The actor also told the outlet that he initially wanted to do A Knight’s Tale because “having a job was appealing to me! I was just trying to pay my rent at that point in my life and just get experience.”
Columbia Pictures/ Everett
Heath Ledger and Paul Bettany in the 2001 film ‘A Knight’s Tale’
“[I loved] being in front of movie cameras, and I loved everything about being on a set, and I had a sort of voracious appetite for knowledge about how it’s done. And so I was just excited to go and play in another movie,” he explained.
As for playing a character based on a real person, let’s just say he didn’t take the time to read any of Canterbury Tales: “I was just sort of making it up as I went along,” he said of playing Chaucer.
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Also during the panel, Bettany and Olsen discussed the forthcoming Vision TV series, Vision Quest, and a potential House of M adaptation, and Olsen forgot that she recorded Marvel Zombies.
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