The Heartbreaking Reason Heath Ledger’s A Knight’s Tale Co-Star Won’t Watch It Again
Paul Bettany says he still can’t watch A Knight’s Tale—the 2001 jousting crowd-pleaser he made with Heath Ledger—because losing his friend and co-star makes it too painful to revisit.
Some movies get more comforting the older they get. For Paul Bettany, 'A Knight's Tale' is not one of them — and the reason is as sad as you think.
What Bettany said at L.A. Comic Con
Asked if fans still hit him up to recite Geoffrey Chaucer lines, Bettany admitted the movie is basically a locked box for him. Speaking to the crowd at L.A. Comic Con (per EW), he said:
'It was a really long time ago. It was like another lifetime ago. And people do come up sometimes, people come up to me on the street and quote things at me, and I literally can't remember. I can't remember any of it.'
'I saw [the film] when it first came out. I've never seen it again since. There are lots of reasons for that, and just one of them is that I miss Heath too much.'
That last part lands hard. Heath Ledger died in 2008 at just 28. Bettany and Ledger shared the screen in the 2001 medieval action-comedy, and clearly that bond still makes the movie tough to revisit.
Quick refresher on 'A Knight's Tale'
If the details are fuzzy: the film follows William Thatcher (Ledger), a peasant squire in 14th-century Europe who decides to fake nobility so he can compete in jousting tournaments. Bettany plays a young Geoffrey Chaucer, who agrees to forge the paperwork that lets William enter under the alias Sir Ulrich von Liechtenstein from Gelderland. Yes, it is exactly the delightfully oddball premise you remember — and fans still love quoting Bettany's Chaucer patter at him, even if he can't bring himself to revisit it.
- Year: 2001; genre: medieval action-comedy
- Cast: Heath Ledger, Paul Bettany, Mark Addy, Rufus Sewell, Shannyn Sossamon, Alan Tudyk
- Writer/director: Brian Helgeland
- Source inspiration: a Chaucer story from The Canterbury Tales
- Reception: mixed reviews, but a solid box office run — $117 million worldwide on a $65 million budget
So, yes, the movie still hits for a lot of us. For Bettany, it hits differently — and that makes perfect sense.