hellomagazine.com

Stellan gets boost from dad Paul on shopping trip

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5 DECEMBER 2006

After his chilling turn in The Da Vinci Code and Firewall, one might be forgiven for thinking English actor Paul Bettany was something of a hard man. The 35-year-old proved he definitely has a softer side when he carried Stellan, his son with Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Connelly, on his shoulders during a shopping trip in New York, though.

And it seems his little boy has a greater tendency to get up to mischief than his famous dad, after the youngster convinced airport police in France that Paul was the greatest baddie of them all – Darth Vader.

"They were in Nice and they got to the airport and went to passport control and Stellan has an American passport and Paul has a British passport," revealed Jennifer in a recent interview. "Stellan's photo was taken when he was about a week old and he's now three years old, so it's completely unrecognisable. They march up to passport control and Stellan announces, 'I'm Luke', and the woman at passport control goes, 'Excuse me?'. She brings someone else over and they ask again, 'Who is this person? Is this your father?' and he goes, 'No, that's not my daddy'."

"And then they call the police. They said, 'Well, who is this man? What's this man's name?'. And he says, 'That's Darth Vader!'. It so happened that they were probably the only three people in the world who hadn't seen Star Wars, so this went on for a little while before someone finally figured it out."