Paul Bettany ruptured about 10 blood vessels in his left eye while filming Marvel’s “VisionQuest,” and he blames his own acting choices. The actor described the injury Thursday on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” In a scene, he said, he pretended a device on his head was scrambling his brain and played it far too big. “I was just wildly overacting,” Bettany told Kimmel, and the performance burst the vessels. He called the episode “a lesson in less is more.”
Kimmel flashed a photo of the blood-filled eye to the studio audience, then joked that other actors cry on cue while Bettany can pop an eye on command. The damage lingered for roughly two weeks, Bettany said, and he assumes erasing it from footage with digital effects cost the production a fortune. The studio has not commented on that cost. Bettany, 55, turned the mishap into a punchline about his own vision. The man who plays a synthetic being with perfect sight is nearsighted, he said, and cannot see anything without his glasses.
“VisionQuest” premiered Oct. 14 on Disney+ and runs eight episodes. It closes a television trilogy that began with “WandaVision” in 2021 and continued with “Agatha All Along” in 2024. Bettany plays a rebuilt White Vision, whose memories have returned but who struggles to attach feelings to them. He goes on the run with Thomas Shepard, played by Ruaridh Mollica, a mysterious boy who may be the reincarnation of his son, while confronting his past.
Bettany has played the character since 2015’s “Avengers: Age of Ultron” and has appeared as Vision in “Captain America: Civil War” and “Avengers: Infinity War.” He also voiced alternate versions of the character in the animated series “What If…?” The series gave him a chance to step back afterward, he told Kimmel. He used the break to spend time with his 15-year-old daughter, Agnes.
