If he weren’t so instantly likable, Paul Bettany might risk irking fellow actors who lack his range. For more than two decades, the English actor has played all manner of roles (a polymath ship’s doctor in Master and Commander, a loyal confidant in A Beautiful Mind, a murderous albino monk in The Da Vinci Code) and has worked with Ron Howard, Joss Whedon, and Lars von Trier. Recently, the 46-year-old has orbited the Marvel universe, voicing JARVIS and playing Vision, and has sat in the director’s chair. Considering his sprawling C.V., it’s hard to believe he has never starred on television. But this month Bettany appears as Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, in the Discovery limited series Manhunt. The true-crime drama traces the F.B.I. hunt for one of America’s most reclusive and elusive domestic terrorists. “I had this image of him as that crazy, dirty hermit being pulled out of the woods. . . . And then I started reading about him. A boy who was jumped two grades ahead during puberty, goes to Harvard at 16 years old, is experimented on, and ends up getting, one could argue, weaponized. . . . One can have empathy for that child and what happened to make this man so furious and the most alone of lonely people,” Bettany says. Herewith, some data gleaned from a lunch with the focused and funny, confident but self-effacing Bettany.

HE WAS born in 1971 in Harlesden, a neighborhood in northwest London.

HIS PARENTS had “theatrical” tendencies. His father, who had served in the Fleet Air Arm of the British Navy, was a dancer with the Royal Ballet and an actor before becoming a teacher. His mother was a singer who later spent her workdays in a travel agency.

HE ALWAYS wanted to be a guitar player. At age 18, he left home and took up busking on the streets of London.

RATHER THAN relying on sidewalk standards, he grew adept at guessing the preferences of passersby. “In 1980-whatever-it-was, I’d see French students and would sing the Cure, or people that look like Smiths fans and play the Smiths.”

HIS NEXT professional foray came as an attendant in a nursing home. But that was short-lived as well, when he fed a resident’s cat to death. Despite assurances that he had just fed her feline, the senile owner would insist that he had forgotten and that he do it again. “Too much personal cost. I had become a killer and I needed to get out.”

HE LOVES the theater and spent a season with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

BUT HE LOATHES theater’s pretension: “While it’s the most rewarding experience you can have, it’s also the most toe-curlingly embarrassing, navel-gazey one.”

HIS GREATEST stage experience was in a Joe Penhall play, Love and Understanding, performed above a pub, in 1997. “It was his breakout moment as a writer, and mine as a young actor. I could’ve done it forever.”

HE MET his wife, Jennifer Connelly (of 14 years now), while acting in 2001’s A Beautiful Mind, for which Connelly won an Oscar.

WHAT SHOCKS Bettany is that he raised “such bright kids”: son Stellan, 14, daughter Agnes, 6, and Kai, 20, Connelly’s son from a previous relationship. “None of them would dream of coming to me with their homework.” For acting tips? “They’ll still go to their mum.”

HE BELIEVES the family that jams together stays together. He still takes to his guitar the way he did in his busking days, but now his kids surpass him. “It’s humiliating,” he says, his voice carrying a note of wry whimsy.

HOME BASE for the family is N.Y.C.’s Tribeca. He loves to escape to their mountain retreat in Vermont but doesn’t foresee a permanent move to the country. “I’m an immigrant—I’ve got to be in the city. London, Vienna, or Rome. But always a city.”

AS AN immigrant, he decided to become an American citizen the day after Trump’s election. “I’ve got to be part of voting [him] out. It’s just the republic that’s at stake.”

HE DIAGNOSES the president as a “needy child-man, with a really monster dad problem.”

TO DISTRACT from the relentless news cycle, he is currently reading Homo Deus, the sequel to Yuval Noah Harari’s cult best-seller, Sapiens, which he calls “weirdly optimistic.”

IN 2015, he made his directorial debut with Shelter, a film inspired by a homeless couple who lived outside his building but disappeared after Hurricane Sandy.

HE DIRECTED his wife as Hannah, the female lead, and Anthony Mackie as her partner.

HE LEARNED to play tennis only after landing the lead in the 2004 romantic comedy Wimbledon. Never having played before, he was taught by greats Pat Cash and Murphy Jensen. “Then I went on to win Wimbledon more than anyone else—because we did 46 takes.”

THESE DAYS, he will occasionally return to the court. “But only when I have a gin-and-tonic in my hand.”