Paul Bettany: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

4. Charles Herman - A Beautiful Mind (2001)

I spoke about A Beautiful Mind in detail in my article on Jennifer Connelly several weeks ago. It's often held up as an example of what makes an awards-worthy film, and its numerous historical liberties have earned it plenty of criticism over the years. But it's still a very good film with an interesting story, and Bettany does a very good job with his little part of it. In case you need reminding, A Beautiful Mind is based on the story of mathematician John Nash (Russell Crowe), tracing his life from his arrival at Princeton in the late-1940s to winning the Nobel Prize for Economics in the mid-1990s. Nash suffers from mental illness which becomes increasingly difficult to manage as his academic career takes off, putting a strain on his marriage to Alicia (Connelly). Crowe won a BAFTA for Best Actor for his performance, to go with Connelly's BAFTA and Oscar wins for her work on the film. Bettany may not have the presence or screen time of his future wife, but his role in A Beautiful Mind is still very significant. In order for the big reveal about Nash's hallucinations to carry any kind of weight, we have to accept Charles is a believable human being with the same ambitions and aspirations as Nash and the other students. Bettany comes across as both likeable and enthusiastic, and critically manages to disguise the fact that his character by its very nature cannot ever develop or change. It's a performance which, like his character, never gets old.