Paul Bettany has done multiple roles throughout his star-studded career, but the one he is the most renowned for is none other than his voice as J.A.R.V.I.S. and performance as Vision in the films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. While fans absolutely loved him in those respective roles, Bettany actually felt “guilty” while working on the Iron Man saga.
In fact, to be more precise, Paul Bettany actually felt like he was committing robbery throughout the time that he lent his voice to Iron Man’s personal artificial intelligence assistant J.A.R.V.I.S. because of the minimal work and tremendous compensation he received for the same in Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man trilogy.
Paul Bettany Felt Guilty For Lending His Voice To The Iron Man Saga
Before his perfect embodiment of Vision in Avengers: Age of Ultron and all of Marvel’s projects that followed, Paul Bettany used to be the voice of J.A.R.V.I.S. (Just a Rather Very Intelligent System), who was notably the AI assistant of Robert Downey Jr.‘s Tony Stark.
However, that role was the very one that had him feeling as guilty as ever, as Bettany shared in an interview with Digital Spy. Explaining how he was only pretty much called in to say what “J.A.R.V.I.S. can be useful in saying the thing that they feel is unclear for an audience,” he said:
“So I come in right at the last minute, I feel like a pirate because, like — acting is a great job. I love it, yeah, it’s the best job. You know, you’re working with really imaginative people, you’re doing imaginative work, and you’re getting paid for it. It’s ridiculous. But this [voicing the character] is robbery.”
Paul Bettany reportedly earned a whopping $100,000, $200,000, and $500,000 for voicing J.A.R.V.I.S. in the three films from the Iron Man trilogy, i.e. Iron Man, Iron Man 2, and Iron Man 3 respectively (as per thegreatdebatersmovie.com).
Looking as amazed as ever while talking about it all, the WandaVision star then further elaborated on why he felt so strongly guilty about just lending his voice to a character that was basically artificial intelligence. He said:
“I mean, I walk in, I did say some lines on a piece of paper for two hours, and then they give me a bag of money and I leave, and I go about my day. […] I sort of feel guilty because at least acting can be exhausting — long hours, you know. This isn’t — I do nothing!”
There you have it: Irrespective of how surprising it may seem, the very performance that serves as one of Paul Bettany‘s best performances to date is actually the very performance that made the Avengers star feel like a robber!
Making It All Worse For Paul Bettany Was Marvel’s Extreme Secrecy
While Paul Bettany suffered enough guilt by just lending his voice to a character that didn’t even physically exist, what made it all the worse for him was the fact of how he knew nothing about the Iron Man saga. Explaining why he has “never seen even one of” the Iron Man films, he said:
“I mean, there’s a bunch of my movies that I haven’t seen and this just happens to be one of them, but at least on those I was there on the days and read the script. These I know nothing about!”
Continuing, he further added another point that added to his misery: The immense secrecy that Marvel follows to keep the plots of its projects under wraps which basically included not sharing the entire script with the actors, but only their respective parts in it.
This entire thing only prolonged his guilt as even when fans came up to him to praise him on his performance, he knew nothing about the same because of this one brutally followed factor of Marvel Studios. As he continued to say:
“I’m plagued by fanboys who love J.A.R.V.I.S. and they come over to me, ‘I really loved it! What was it like?’ Like, I’ve got no idea what they’re talking about! I mean, I’ve got no idea about Iron Man. I don’t get sent the whole script! […] So, it’s totally bizarre and I have no idea what those movies are like.”
Well, thankfully, this entire misery of Paul Bettany was finally put to an end within two years once and for all, considering how his next projects after voicing J.A.R.V.I.S. in Iron Man 3 were him embodying Vision for all the future projects to date from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
