When Paul Bettany was approached for the title role in Alan Ball’s Uncle Frank, he was perhaps as skeptical as he was excited. “I’m a big Alan Ball fan, but also sort of a ‘glass is half empty’ type of fellow, so I went, ‘I’m going to get the one sh*t Alan Ball script,’” the actor joked. “I read it and it wasn’t, of course. But then I had lots of questions about whether I could and should play the part.”