From valet to Vision, ‘Avengers’ actor evolves
Paul Bettany finally gets to show his face among his super-cohorts
Paul Bettany has been in as many Marvel superhero movies as Robert Downey Jr. You just haven’t seen him until now.
The blockbuster hit Avengers: Age of Ultron is all about evolution, though, and so it goes for the English actor.
Bettany, 43, voiced the artificial intelligence of J.A.R.V.I.S., the computer “butler” for Downey’s Tony Stark going all the way back to 2008’s Iron Man, so it was high time for a makeover. And now he’s the Vision, an android who flies, has a wide-eyed view of humanity and even rocks a cape.
“It’s lovely to finally be on set with these guys you’ve been working with but never actually met,” he says.
When the villainous robot Ultron (James Spader) puts all mankind on his kill list — and (spoiler alert!) seemingly murders J.A.R.V.I.S. in a cyber-fashion — Stark uploads Bettany’s disembodied character into a body for atonement.
“The naiveté of a creature who’s just been born without any preconceptions of the world and no moral compass except one he builds for himself was really interesting and fun to experiment with,” he says.
The Vision is fully entrenched on the Avengers team at the end of Age of Ultron and has just been announced as part of the team that will appear in Captain America: Civil War. He also has the powerful Mind Stone implanted on his forehead, so the cosmic villain Thanos undoubtedly will target him in the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War movies.
Age of Ultron also includes a knowing nod to the relationship between Vision and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) — in the comics, they were married. “Whether we continue to investigate that, I couldn’t possibly say,” he teases.
The source material was a big help. “You Google Image search the Vision, and one of the first pictures you see is him crying and it says, ‘Even an android can cry.’ That’s kind of cool and great.”
If only the 3½ hours a day that went into getting superheroready was as enjoyable. He wore facial prosthetics that hampered his hearing, as well as a stuffy costume with a radiator that pumped ice water to cool him off.
He missed the J.A.R.V.I.S days a little. Back then, “I turned up for two hours at the end of production and went home with a bag of cash,” Bettany says. “But the upside of actually being in the movie is obvious and fantastic.”
“The naiveté of a creature who’s just been born without any preconceptions of the world ... was really interesting and fun to experiment with.”