Paul Bettany has spoken publicly about the guilt he still carries over the death of his younger brother Matthew, who died at the age of eight after falling from a school roof. The 55-year-old actor was 16 at the time of the accident in Hertfordshire, where the family lived on the grounds of a boarding school where their father worked as a drama teacher.
Appearing on the Sibling Revelry podcast on Tuesday, Bettany explained that he had taught Matthew how to climb the building from which he later fell. "My brother died when he was eight. And that was bad. I guess that's part of the reason I ended up on the streets busking," he said.
Guilt and Grief
"It was really incredibly hard. He fell off, I guess he was playing hide and seek and he fell off a building that I had taught him how to climb. So there was an enormous amount of guilt to work through on that," Bettany said. He added: "I thought I should have stuck close to him - been there for him - but I wasn't."
Following Matthew's death, Bettany left school and moved to London, where he busked with his guitar. He has previously spoken about turning to alcohol and cocaine to cope with his grief, and has described having a "psychological break" after the tragedy, saying, "It exploded our family."
Therapy and Recovery
Despite his early struggles, Bettany went on to graduate from the Drama Centre London and perform with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He found early film success with Gangster No 1 in 2000, followed by Hollywood roles in A Knight's Tale, A Beautiful Mind, Master & Commander: The Far Side of The World and The Da Vinci Code.
The actor, who has two children with his wife, actress Jennifer Connelly, said therapy brought "big revelations." He explained: "I think that everybody is dropped into a maze by their childhood. And the job of growing up is trying to find your way out of that maze. And I did."
Bettany said he eventually stopped attributing every problem in his life to Matthew's death. "When you have a big moment of trauma, it's very easy to hang every issue or every problem that you perceive that you have on this one moment," he said. "And it's only moments of calm when you're really able to sort of unpick it and kind of go, huh, that wasn't about that at all."
The Avengers star also revealed that he thinks of Matthew when he needs to cry on camera, admitting: "It's madness. I'm 50 years old now and still keeping these wounds fresh. I do it – and I really do mean this – because I'm just not good enough to do it imaginatively in the moment."
