CS Video: Shelter’s Paul Bettany, Jennifer Connelly and Anthony Mackie

November 12, 2015

Video interviews with Shelter writer/director Paul Bettany and his stars, Jennifer Connelly and Anthony Mackie

Whenever an actor decides to direct a movie, it’s almost always met with some trepidation and cynicism by filmgoers, because it’s hard not to think there are ulterior motives behind the decision. That might have been the case back in 1977 when “Happy Days” star Ron Howard decided to direct a feature film and it’s become more the case in recent years.

As luck would have it, actor Paul Bettany had worked many times with Howard and many other great filmmakers before tackling his first feature as a writer/director, but Shelter is far from the vanity project we’ve come to expect from actors-turned-directors. Sure, it stars Bettany’s wife and A Beautiful Mind Oscar-winning co-star Jennifer Connelly, but this is a film that’s about as far away from the glamor of Hollywood as one can get.

Connelly plays Hannah, an attractive and well-educated woman who has ended up homeless and addicted on drugs after tragic circumstances and one day, she meets Anthony Mackie’s Tahir, a Nigerian immigrant who has also fallen on hard time since escaping to this country from war back home. Together, they must face the trials of living on the streets, sticking together as best they can as they look for shelter and overcoming their respective pasts that put them into that situation.

Shelter isn’t the first drama about homelessness this year, but it’s another film that shines a spotlight on the fact that the people living on the streets of New York City, that we tend to ignore and overlook in order to go through our daily lives, have their own stories and struggles. Bettany’s debut beautifully captures that with a film that’s sometimes hard to watch due to its attempt at the grim realities of the homeless but also has a beauty in the interaction between Connelly and Mackie in a two-hander that brings out the best in both of them.