Paul Bettany Caused An Embarrassing Situation For Tom Hanks In The Da Vinci Code
After the events of "Avengers: Endgame," Paul Bettany went from being the little voice in Tony Stark's head to becoming a full-fledged superhero of his own as Vision. But before the actor debuted as J.A.R.V.I.S. in "Iron Man," he'd already spent a good chunk of his career playing already an eccentric bunch of characters. He appeared as a young Geoffrey Chaucer in "A Knight's Tale" and as a convincing figment of John Nash's imagination in "A Beautiful Mind." He even reunited again with Russell Crowe for "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," where Bettany starred as a naval surgeon serving aboard a ship during the Napoleonic Wars.
Or perhaps some of you are like me — your first introduction to Bettany being his unnerving role as the zealot Silas in Ron Howard's adaptation of Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code." Thanks to "WandaVision," the image of Bettany freshest in most people's minds is as a lovable and sweet android dad from a utopian suburbia. Ironically, the actor's role in "The Da Vinci Code" put him on a literal collision course with another famous and beloved American dad: Tom Hanks. But be forewarned, the following anecdote may forever alter how you imagine Hanks — though not in any serious or distressing way regarding his character or art — especially if you're prone to juvenile humor.
Hanks and the fart heard round the set
One of the appeals of Dan Brown's protagonist Robert Langdon, a man Tom Hanks has perfectly embodied even as subsequent films have languished, is how out of place he often appears in the conspiracies he's caught up in. He's no Indiana Jones, and throughout "The Da Vinci Code," that fact is often nudged. Especially when Langdon is getting his a** kicked. In one such scene, Silas ambushes him, shoves him into a bookshelf, and sucker-punches him in the gut. But as Paul Bettany told Esquire, he got a completely unexpected (and perhaps involuntary) reaction from his costar: a "gargantuan fart." Bettany continued:
"I was like, 'Holy s***, what am I going to do? It's Tom Hanks, the biggest star in the world, and I've just made him fart.' He looked at me and I looked at him. And he went, 'What's wrong with you?'"
What does one do when they've punched and made fart a man who has portrayed such adored figures as Forrest Gump, Woody, and Mister Rogers? It's probably a special kind of embarrassment being admonished by Hanks, one akin to the displeasure in receiving from authority figures from adolescence (math teacher, coach, relative) who could actually move you with their disappointment. We can try and imagine Bettany's mortification, but I imagine we fall short.
Although, I'm curious if the take that was used was the same one that elicited the epic fart. We've all heard stories of actors improvising and riffing off one another to unlock a special performance from inside the other, but this was probably way too literal. Hopefully it's all water under the bridge for the two actors — or more accurately, past gas!