12h 10min, feb 24, 2022 y - THE TIMES Paul Bettany on Warhol, WandaVision and those Johnny Depp texts

Description:

FROM THE TIMES:

Paul Bettany on becoming Warhol, WandaVision and those Johnny Depp texts

The actor talks to Dominic Maxwell about playing Andy Warhol in his first theatre role for 25 years — and his “embarrassing” text messages about Amber Heard

by Dominic Maxwell

Coincidence? Or careful planning? It is 25 years since Paul Bettany last appeared on stage. And what do you know: in his comeback play, The Collaboration, he plays Andy Warhol at a similar juncture in the American artist’s life. Anthony McCarten’s play depicts Warhol at the point in 1984 in which he returned to painting after 25 years of conceptual art, driven by an urge to work with the new sensation of the New York art world, Jean-Michel Basquiat.

A Hollywood star using his muscle to make his onstage life rhyme with his offstage life, then? Sitting on the other side of a sticky table in the Young Vic theatre’s bar, said star looks distinctly unimpressed by the idea. In fact if there is one thing I take away from my hour with Bettany, 50, it’s how little control even a seeming success story such as him feels he has over his career.

[Edited to relevant paragraphs only - full article available via the links below]

He says, it came as a shock to the system to be dragged into the recent trial in which Johnny Depp lost his lawsuit for libel against The Sun(owned by News Corp, parent company of The Times) for calling him a “wife-beater”.

He chooses his words carefully. It was “embarrassing”, he admits, for their sometimes brutal text exchanges about Depp’s ex-wife Amber Heard — then Depp’s girlfriend — to be gone over by a team of lawyers.

“And we live in a world without context. I didn’t know Johnny when he was married to Amber. I knew him before. But we hadn’t spoken for years. During the marriage I didn’t know them. So I wasn’t around for any of that.”

Added to timeline:

Date:

Images: