A Knight’s Tale star Paul Bettany has explained that he can’t rewatch the 2001 medieval comedy due to his late co-star, Heath Ledger. Serving as Ledger’s third international production following 1999’s 10 Things I Hate About You and 2000’s The Patriot, A Knight’s Tale was a loose comedic reworking of the 14th-century tale from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.

Bettany, who had primarily starred in British film and television productions up until that point, joined the A Knight’s Tale’s cast alongside Ledger, Alan Tudyk, Mark Addy, Rufus Sewell and Shannyn Sossamon, as a desтιтute and debaucherous version of Chaucer himself.

During a recent appearance at L.A. Comic Con (via People), Bettany was asked to recite some of his character’s lines from the movie, but the actor admitted that he was unable to remember many of the film’s lines. Suggesting it was “like another lifetime ago,” the Marvel star revealed that he had only seen the movie when it was released.

Bettany also went on to explain that there were numerous reasons why he has not watched A Knight’s Tale since its release, one of them being “that I miss Heath too much.”

Sadly, Ledger would pᴀss away in January 2008, at a point in his career when he had begun to shed his earlier teen heartthrob status and demonstrate the full range of his dramatic prowess, as well as begin his steps toward becoming a director.

Having already been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for 2005’s Brokeback Mountain, Ledger would be posthumously awarded the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his turn as the Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight.

While A Knight’s Tale would generate nowhere near the amount of critical acclaim as some of his later outings, it would still go on to generate a healthy box office run of $117.5 million against an original budget of $65 million, and further cement Leger’s rapid ascent from a little-known Australian actor to a major Hollywood star.

Despite Bettany admitting to not having watched A Knight’s Tale since its original release, the star has previously pitched his own idea for a sequel that he developed in concert with Tudyk. Revolving primarily around the teenage daughter of Ledger’s William Thatcher, and her own desire to become a knight in a world which forbids it, the sequel would have seen her character seek out her father’s original friends.

However, despite director Brian Helgeland also pitching his own sequel concept to Netflix, plans for a follow-up to the original A Knight’s Tale have never come to fruition. Perhaps, much like Bettany’s insistence on avoiding rewatching the original, the idea of returning to Ledger’s classic movie would be too much for fans still mourning his pᴀssing.

Source: People