Thane Bettany

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Thane William Howard Hardcastle, born on May 1929 – November 7, 2015), an English actor and former dancer.

He was the father of film actor Paul Bettany.

Early years

Thane Bettany was born in Sarawak, a self-governing state on the island of Borneo, which was then ruled by the White Rajahs. Thane was brought up by an older brother, named Peter Bettany. Agnes Newton Keith, an American memoirist, was his godmother, author of Three Came Home.

The Bettanys knew the Rhys-Jones family, as well as British expats in Sarawak. Howard John Bettany, Thane's father, married Margaret Rhys-Jones (née Molesworth; a descendant of Robert Molesworth, 1st Viscount Molesworth). Thane Bettany served as the godfather to Sophie, his daughter's new stepbrother. As Countess of Wessex, he was summoned by royal order to attend her wedding to Prince Edward in 1999.

Personal life

After a few years with the New Zealand Players, he returned home and taught at Corona Stage School, where he met Anne Kettle, whom he would later marry. Kettle took over as the Artistic Director of the English Theatre Company in Norway, inviting him over as his stage manager. They revived their acquaintance at the Lincoln Theatre Royale in England. According to their son, they married and settled in North London, "a rough estate in Harlesden," and although stage work came to a stop, when his children were born, he began looking for other jobs closer to home. He continued to perform, mainly in television; during this time, he appeared in Tarak on Doctor Who, one of his most well-known roles.

The couple had three children: Sarah, elder son Paul, and Matthew. Sarah and Paul went to school in North London. The family lived on campus when Sarah, Paul, and Matthew were 11, 9, 9, 9 and 2 years old, respectively; their father, William Long, enrolled as a drama teacher at the Hertfordshire all-girls boarding school, Queenswood School, was a student at the Hertfordshire all-girls boarding school, Kingswood School.

Matthew, his son, died after a fall at Queenswood when he was 8 years old. Paul went back to live on his own in London shortly after. After 25 years of marriage, Thane and Anne divorced in 1993. Bettany considered investing privately for sex-reassignment surgery because he was too young for NHS methods; in the end, he considered it too costly and likely to impede his remaining acting career. He and his partner, Andy Little, performed as an actor in Fife, Scotland, and in November 2015, he began to work regularly as an actor, even with Dundee Rep until his death in November 2015. Following Andy's death after a 20-year marriage, Thane "went back to the closet" due to anxiety with depression and finding his sexuality and Catholicism, afraid of "not being able to get into Heaven," according to his son Paul.

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Dancing career

After seeing a debut as an infant, Bettany became enamoured with ballet. After leaving school, he used the money earned by his father to attend ballet. He began attending Wells Ballet School in Sadler, which later became the Royal Ballet School in the Royal Navy as a mechanic. He began dancing in musical theatre, but after a back break, he had to give up professional dance. Acting was a logical career change, but he had a stammer. He began to study mime in Paris with Charles Antonetti, who helped him with his stammer. Bettany returned to England and joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre Company, which would later become the Royal Shakespeare Company. In Sir Michael Redgrave's Hamlet, he played Osric to Osric. He was the understudy for Ferdinand's role in The Tempest; he took over the role when the play was moved to Drury Lane with Sir John Gield.

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