How Paul Bettany’s marriage to his ‘movie crush’ Jennifer Connelly helped him overcome childhood tragedy & drug binges
SHE was the child star of Labyrinth who grew to be named as one of the most beautiful women in the world - and he was a lanky redhead from London.
But when Paul Bettany finally met his teenage crush Jennifer Connelly, on the set of A Beautiful Mind, it was love at first sight.
The couple, both 49, have lived life behind closed doors since tying the knot in 2003.
But this week the Avengers actor’s name was dragged into the limelight when he was reported as Johnny Depp’s “drug buddy” in his ongoing court case with the Sun.
The claims that Depp had “dabbled in drugs” with the English actor and supplied him with cocaine has shone an unwelcome light on one of Hollywood’s most enduring marriages.
Here’s how Paul fell for his future wife as a teenager - and how a childhood tragedy led to him turning to drugs and alcohol years later.
Teenage crush sparked by early role in Labyrinth
As a child model and actress, Jennifer Connelly landed her first film role in the now classic Once Upon a Time in America, at the age of 13.
She followed it up with the lead in the fantasy movie Labyrinth, opposite David Bowie, which shot her to stardom at the age of 16, in 1986.
Across the Atlantic, at his home in the grounds of a Hertfordshire boarding school, 15-year-old Paul Bettany fell madly in love watching the teenage actress on screen and vowed to marry her.
It would be another 14 years before they met, on the set of A Beautiful Mind and in the meantime, a family tragedy struck which would change Paul’s life forever.
Brother's tragic death 'ripped family apart'
Paul’s teenage years were spent in the grounds of a girls’ boarding school in Hatfield, Hertz, where his dad was a teacher.
But he admits it didn’t lead to any romance with the upper crust pupils at the school.
“The fantasy of being a teenage boy living next to a girls' school didn't really live up to the reality,” he told The Guardian.
“You fall between boyfriend material and bit of rough and you're sort of, ‘the staff's son.’”
He was close to siblings Sarah and Matthew, who was eight years younger, but was left devastated when his little brother fell from the roof of a sports hall on the school complex and died.
Paul was 16 and Matthew’s death, at just eight years old, ripped the family apart.
“It coloured everything,” he said. “That was the end of family life from that point, as often happens in families where there's a death of a child. The whole family explodes. Life was never the same again.”
He says losing his brother wrecked his teen years “when you are supposed to feel that sort of crazy, almost narcissistic confidence as a 16 or 17-year-old, feeling that you are somehow indestructible.”
He added: “I was missing the person who at the time was the most important person to me. I was very close to my brother. It was hideous in all shades of hideousness.”
I was missing the person who at the time was the most important person to me. I was very close to my brother.
Paul Bettany
He later admitted his pain over his brother’s death led him to turn to drink and drugs, even as his career was taking off in his early 20s.
“(It was) manic,” he told The Times. “I don't know if I was aware I was numbing myself at the time. I don't think (there was anger). It was nobody's fault.”
In another interview he said: “I totally fell in love with (cocaine) the moment I started doing it. I did it all day long.
“Cocaine ended really abruptly for me when I realised I couldn’t work while using it, and work kept me on an even keel.
“It made me incredibly paranoid that people were staring at me — and when you’re an actor that makes cocaine a ludicrous drug to do. I stopped because it was threatening my ability to act: the one thing that gave me self-worth.”
'I've never been close to someone that beautiful'
Paul quit school at 16 and left home, working as a street busker in the years after his brother's death before joining a London drama school at 19.
His big breakthrough came in 2001, when he starred as medieval author Geoffrey Chaucer in A Knight’s Tale, alongside Heath Ledger.
It was this role that would lead to his meeting with Jennifer - after director Ron Howard saw his performance and cast him in A Beautiful Mind.
While Paul remembered his attraction to his future wife was “instant”, their reactions to that first fateful meeting were markedly different.
“I remember meeting him at the first read through,” Jennifer told Entertainment Tonight.
“I thought, ‘Hmm, he’s really good that guy.'”
Paul recalled: “I’ve never been this close to someone that beautiful before. I remember thinking, ‘I bet every man you ever met has tried to flirt with you.”
At the time Paul was dating A Knight’s Tale co-star Laura Fraser and Jennifer, who already had a three-year-old son, Kai, with photographer David Dugan, was rumoured to be dating Russell Crowe.
Paul kept his feelings hidden and when the film wrapped, the pair went their separate ways.
"Clearly we noticed each other and clearly we liked each other,” says Jennifer.
"But I have very strong feelings about things that are right and things that aren't and that was all very clear …"
Proposal before first date
A year later Paul was filming in Tuscany when the horrors of the 9/11 terror attack on New York’s Twin Towers unfurled.
Out shopping for groceries, he joined a crowd outside a cafe just in time to see the second plane hit the second tower.
His first thought was that he needed to call New Yorker Jennifer.
“Like so many people’s lives in that moment mine was changed forever,” he told chat show host Larry King.
“I ran back to this house and spent two days trying to call this woman that I barely knew.
“I remember thinking to myself, ‘What are you doing?’ Then realising I was in love.
“When I finally got hold of her I said "I'm coming over, let's get married." We had never dated.”
Amazingly, Jennifer agreed and Paul prepared to pack up and move to the States to be with her.
Whirlwind romance and 'Victorian' wedding
Determined to fulfill his teenage dream of walking down the aisle with his childhood crush, Paul wooed her with music.
“He started playing guitar and it was all over,” Jennifer later said.
The couple wed in a private family ceremony in Scotland, on New Year’s day 2003, barely four months after getting together.
Paul described the wedding as “Victorian” because the couple didn’t live together first, and the wedding party played Twister at the reception.
“I was like a stalker really,” jokes Paul. “We got married really quickly because I thought she had a three to six month window before she sees through the accent.
“She went to Yale and I left school at 16 so I knew she’d work out that I hadn’t read Proust.”
After the wedding Paul packed up and moved to Brooklyn, where Jennifer grew up, and where the family still live.
Jennifer’s son Kai, 23, was soon joined by Stellan, 16 and Agnes Lark, now nine - and all three went to the same primary school their mother attended as a child.
“Jennifer is an amazing mum and she was always brilliant about cutting me slack,” says Paul.
“Once I saw these black spots on Stellan's gums when he was a little baby and went, 'Oh my God, he's got black gum baby death,' and she said calmly, 'I think that's what happens just before teeth come through sometimes.'
"I said, 'No, call the f***ing ambulance!' and I called the doctor, who, of course, said it was just teeth.”
After becoming a father, Paul says his brother’s death once again returned to haunt him, making him “a neurotic parent.”
“I really have to fight that instinct to surround them in bubble wrap and put a helmet on them.
“But there is a huge gift to come from it as well in that, yes, life is fragile – and, yes, we are in a precarious situation – but it is also spectacularly precious.”
As a husband, Paul says he has learned to deal with a family crisis with cuddles.
“My instinct is to talk about it, but I’ve found cuddles and saying, ‘I know, it’s awful’ are a better way to go.”
Since their highland wedding, the pair have become known as one of Hollywood’s happiest couples.
As well as starring together in the 2009 film Creation, Paul directed his wife in the hard-hitting movie 2014 movie Shelter, which saw her play a homeless heroin addict.
They have kept their marriage largely behind closed doors and Jennifer shies away from any social media, preferring to keep their children out of the limelight.
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The claims Depp dabbled in drugs with Paul during his marriage to Amber Heard will be a shock to devoted Jennifer.
But, as one of the most solid showbiz couples around, they stand more chance than most of weathering the storm.