Paul Bettany reveals he carried 'enormous guilt' over his brother's death as he opens up on how tragic childhood accident shaped his life

Paul Bettany has opened up about the devastating guilt he has suffered following his brother's death in a childhood accident – revealing it's taken years of therapy to come to terms with the tragedy.

The Marvel star, 55, was just 16 when Matthew died, aged eight, after falling from the roof of a tennis pavilion at a school in Hertfordshire, where their father worked as a teacher.

Explaining how the horror accident has shaped his life ever since, Paul has revealed he struggled with guilt for years because he taught his brother Matthew how to climb the very building from which he later fell to his death.

'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 on the Sibling Revelry podcast on Tuesday.

'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.'

The family were living on the grounds of Queenswood School, near Hatfield, where their father, drama teacher Thane Bettany, worked.

Following Matthew's death, Paul left school and moved to London, where he earned money busking with his guitar.

He has previously spoken about turning to alcohol and cocaine as he struggled to cope with the loss. 'I thought I should have stuck close to him - been there for him - but I wasn't,' he has said.

Now Paul – who has two children with his wife, Hollywood star Jennifer Connelly, 55 – has explained how therapy has helped him make sense of the loss that consumed him.

'I think that everybody is dropped into a maze by their childhood,' he said. 'And the job of growing up is trying to find your way out of that maze. And I did.

'But it took some doing and a lot of time, you know, a lot of therapy.'

The actor, who starred in WandaVision, A Knight's Tale and The Da Vinci Code, added: 'The thing about therapy is you really want to go when you're in crisis, you really want to show up. But when you're not in crisis, it's hard to motivate yourself to go.

'But those are where the big revelations happened for me... when I was in crisis, I was just too busy trying to stay on the earth.'

Paul also revealed how he eventually learned to stop attributing every difficulty in his life to the death of his brother.

'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 where you feel like it was life before Matthew died and life after Matthew died,' 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. That was about this other thing.'

Paul also said that his brother's death had 'exploded' his family and that he had experienced a 'real psychological break'.

Paul also believes Matthew's death may have played a part in his father's decision to go back into the closet decades later.

Thane, a former Royal Ballet dancer and drama teacher, came out as gay at 63 and went on to enjoy a long relationship with a man called Andy. But after Andy died, he returned to his Catholic faith and began insisting he was straight.

Paul now says he believes his father feared his sexuality would prevent him from being reunited with Matthew in heaven.

'He had to get into heaven as a straight man so he could see his son who had died,' he said.

Paul has also spoken about how the grief has followed him into his acting career, previously revealing that he sometimes keeps his brother's old belongings just out of shot on film sets to help him access painful memories during emotional scenes.

He has now explained that he found performing his own material too exposing, whereas acting allowed him to express painful emotions while hiding behind a character.

'I hated playing my songs, I felt so revealed, hated it,' he said. 'I think that acting really and going to drama school really saved me in that it gave me a place that I could turn very negative things into something creative.'

He added: 'There was always a mask that I could hide behind, even if I was playing a character that was exactly like me. Nobody knew which bits were me and which bits were made up.'

Reflecting on how acting helped him channel his grief, Paul said: 'It became very clear to me, oh, there's the path. I can do something with this brokenness that I am feeling.'

Back in 2015, Paul reflected on his spiral of drug and alcohol abuse following the tragic death.

After leaving home and working as a street busker in the years after his brother's death, he finally landed his breakthrough movie role in A Knight's Tale in 2001 but became heavily dependent on the substances. 

He recalled: 'It was manic. I don't know if I was aware I was numbing myself at the time. I don't think. There was anger. It was nobody's fault. It was the awfulness that is bad luck.'

In an interview with The Times newspaper, he added: 'I think (the accident) is the very centre of my feeling that life is precarious, but I think I'm becoming better at it. 

'As more years pass without another catastrophe, I realise that the worst-case scenario often doesn't happen.

'I am definitely feeling calmer on that but don't think it will ever entirely leave. It's an indelible worry.'

In 2022 he also spoke about the loss in an interview with Gentleman's Journal where he opened up about how his difficult real-life experiences have influenced his acting work.

At the time he admitted he can't switch his emotions 'on and off' when filming tragic scenes and instead draws on his own experiences to replicate that raw emotion. 

Paul said he finds himself 'picking at scabs' when filming emotional scenes - particularly when he starred in Uncle Frank. 

The 2020 movie sees Paul star as Frank Bledsoe, who returns home for his father's funeral, and Paul previously admitted to taking his late brother's jumper on set with him to channel that grief.

One heart-wrenching scene sees Paul gutturally sobbing in a graveyard, and the actor revealed he thought about his raw grief after losing Matthew while filming it.

'Some people have amazing access to their emotions, and can switch them on like that, and I'm just not good enough to do that,' he explained.

'If I find myself in a scene that requires that, I find myself picking at scabs that I'd rather not pick at.' 

Speaking about the graveyard scene in Uncle Frank, he added: 'And it's like: What am I doing? What am I doing! What the hell am I doing! Sat here in front of a graveyard, thinking about dead people in my life?'