Superhero Paul Bettany signs up for the Marvel party: British actor will star as The Vision in new Avengers movie Age of Ultron



Surperhero: Paul Bettany will star in the next Avengers movie

British actor Paul Bettany has joined the elite super-heroes the Avengers and is in training to bring a comic book warrior out of the cold and onto the big screen.

Bettany will play the Vision, an old-timer in the world of illustrated heroes, in the second Marvel Avengers movie, Age Of Ultron.

He’ll join Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man, Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, Chris Evans’s Captain America and Mark Ruffalo’s The Hulk.

Bettany and Jeremy Renner, who plays ace archer Hawkeye, were at Shepperton Studios just outside London this week, meeting with director Joss Whedon.

They did a series of costume, hair and make-up tests and worked with stuntmen and armourers.

The casting of Bettany has been shrouded in secrecy, but he was spotted at Shepperton on Monday. The Avengers: Age Of Ultron is code-named After Party . . . or at least it was.

I bet as soon as executives at Marvel and Disney read this report they’ll change it. But it was certainly working yesterday when I rang the studio and asked to be put through to the production office for After Party.

I asked for Whedon, and producer Kevin Feige, but was told they weren’t available. ‘I’m not at liberty to speak to you about the production,’ a polite unit assistant informed me.

The Vision emerged in 1940, but didn’t become associated with the Avengers team until the Sixties, when Ultron (played by James Spader) created him as a weapon to be used against the Avengers.



Through various story-lines and complex machinations, the Vision turned the tables and became an Avengers member himself, and married (or whatever it is androids do) Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen will play her).

The Vision’s powers include the ability to fire beams of infra-red and microwave radiation, and use a hologram force to render himself invisible.

Make-up experts were using various powders and potions on Bettany’s pale skin to bring about the Vision’s chalk-white complexion. Filming begins later next month on locations in the UK and South Africa.

Bettany is technically already part of the Iron Man/Avengers family. He provides the voice of Tony Stark’s computer butler Jarvis, throughout the Iron Man franchise and in Avengers Assemble - but this will be the first time that the actor will be physically seen on screen.



Bettany, who starred in A Beautiful Mind, will be seen soon in Transcendence with Johnny Depp.



No word yet on whether he will do double duty in The Avengers: Age Of Ultron as both the Vision and JARVIS.

Star-studded: The franchise already features Robert Downey Jr, Samuel L Jackson and Scarlett Johansson

A concierge with no reservations

Ralph Fiennes plays a concierge in his latest movie and confessed he had personal experience of hotel work, at the humblest level.

The award-winning star plays Gustave H, the majordomo at the centre of Wes Anderson’s sublimely layered movie The Grand Budapest Hotel, which opened the Berlin Film Festival last night.

Gustave is a fascinating creation who rules the fictional hotel with a rod of iron but allows himself little pecca- dilloes, such as keeping elderly guests company at night (particularly if they’re blonde and wealthy).

He’s also vain. He enjoys a splash of special cologne (won’t travel without it) and seems, initially, unbending. ‘He’s actually a good soul with old-fashioned principles and a sense of honour,’ Fiennes said.

Several times Gustave comes to the aid of the lobby boy (newcomer Tony Revolori), especially when soldiers in the fictional European country where the movie is set, between the wars, close the borders and start asking for papers.

Service with an iron fist: Ralph Fiennes pulls no punches as concierge in the Grand Budapest Hotel

Gustave is so proper that I asked Fiennes whether he had, perhaps, shadowed a concierge at one of the top establishments? He did better than that, he told me: he once worked as a porter at Brown’s in Mayfair.



He recalled the hierarchy behind closed doors, ‘the concierge at the front desk being the top’. ‘Then the hall porters, house porters and chambermaids.’ He started off as a house porter, ‘which meant I went around in a white coat and changed light-bulbs and shower curtains’.

He was later promoted to carrying cases to guests rooms — he once carried valises for Oscar-winning star Jack Palance.

Did Palance tip? ‘The thing is, you weren’t meant to wait around for a tip. It feels awkward and clumsy, so I went to leave and he said: “What are you doing? Where are you going!” So I stood while he slowly counted out some coins. Slightly humiliating, but he did tip me.’

The actor made the movie after directing himself and the great actresses Felicity Jones and Joanna Scanlan in The Invisible Woman, his powerful study of the women in Charles Dickens’s life.