By the time Paul Rudd arrived at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in the early 1990s, he had ditched his mother’s shiny gold pants, but he still had a mop of hair cascading down his back, and his sartorial choices didn’t scream “everyman.”
His ambition: “Serious acting.” The air quotes are his, not mine.
Hanging on his wall as inspiration was an enthusiastic review of My left footWhich earned Daniel Day-Lewis his first Oscar for playing a man with cerebral palsy. He was Rudd’s favorite actor, he says, “still is,” and after seeing the film, he was convinced that this was “precisely the kind of actor” he wanted to be.
But as graduation approached, Rudd was invited to sit down with a Hollywood agent. “I wanted to be a dangerous, thought-provoking, amazing actor…and then I had this meeting and she said, ‘You’re going to need to cut your hair.'” He recalled. “I was skeptical at the time. “She says, ‘Well, you’re not an edgy guy, you’re an all-American type, and they’ll want you clean.’ And I say: Oh my God, this is not who I am. This is the last thing I want to hear. “
At 57, Rudd has figured out what Hollywood wants him to be. In fact, he’s built a long and successful career being that guy. And although he found ways to play considerably darker roles on stage, which he would fall back on whenever he could, his good-natured, goofy appeal fueled three decades of romantic comedies (ignorant), R-rated comedies (I love you, man) and, most recently, an extended tour of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He has been called the “MSG of actors”. the New York TimesShe pointed out: “You can add Rod to any movie, and the movie will taste better.”
His next project, Power songfrom Singing StreetIt could be said that John Carney is a departure. Out June 5, the film stars Rudd, opposite Nick Jonas, as an aging musician who never had the rock star life or career he envisioned for himself when he was younger. Instead, he met his wife, had a child and settled down as lead singer of The Bride & Groove – “Ireland’s hottest wedding band,” according to the sticker on their van. Rudd took on the role in part because he recognized the sad character.
“I mean I don’t think I’m exactly like what people might think of me. I’m not just a happy-go-lucky guy,” he says, then calms down.
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“Well, I can get very depressed,” he said, hesitant at first. “But we’re all multi-dimensional, aren’t we? We all feel things deeply. We all feel very sad about things. We all have those moments where you wake up at three in the morning and your mind is racing and it’s the noise of the world and your life and ‘How am I going to keep up with all this?’ I feel that too. I never talk about that in interviews.”
Now that it’s started, but…
***
Early this May afternoon, Rod met me at a restaurant in his Brooklyn neighborhood. He just came back from a few days without his phone, which was purely accidental, he says, but freeing nonetheless. I arrive first and ask the Chairman which seat Rudd prefers, to which he laughs. “Oh, Paul’s sitting anywhere,” he says, and the implication is subtle but clear: it’s not “movie star Paul Rudd” here.
The truth is that Rudd abandoned Los Angeles for the kind of common man existence that New York provided immediately after making it. ignorant During the mid-nineties. As far as his actors were concerned, that was a surprisingly stupid career move. By the time the comedy captured the zeitgeist and made Rudd the heart of a thinking girl in the summer of 1995, he had already turned his attention to a stage production of Last night of Ballyhoo. Suddenly, he was 3,000 miles away from Hollywood and no longer available at all. “My agent said, ‘What the hell are you doing?'” “But I was so excited,” he says. “I was 25 or 26, and I was about to be on Broadway.
This was not the first time he left his representatives confused by his choices. Rudd landed a recurring role on the popular drama series Sisters A few years ago ignorantHe was then released on bail to study classical English drama at Oxford. “It was my first real acting job, and my agent thought I was crazy to leave then too,” Rudd says. “Honestly, everyone was saying: ‘You’ve already got a job, now you’re going back to school to learn how to do something and hopefully get a job?'” But he wasn’t thinking in those terms. Rudd was focusing on developing the skills he would need for what would be a long career. All of his heroes had formal training, and he intended to follow in their footsteps.
“I was also very aware of what I liked and what I found moving, so I was looking through the lens, like, ‘Is this something Tom Waits would find cool? Is this something Elvis Costello would do?” he says. “But as a career goes on, as you get older and have more success, that lens becomes murkier.”
Between any lighthearted comedy that Rudd was the face of, he would have been working in a play by Neil LaBute or someone else. He loved the close-knit community and the credibility that theater provided. “People took you a little more seriously, saying, ‘Oh, you’re not one of these people who lives in L.A. and wants to be famous,’” he says. “And my favorite thing about doing a play, which I used to do every year, was that it felt very removed from the film industry and really connected to what I loved about it.”
Plus, he didn’t have to play everyman on stage. He was portraying an irresponsible, alcoholic in the West End production The long day’s journey into night Over 25 years ago when he met his dear friend Olivia Colman. “That this wonderful, kind, friendly person could play against type was no surprise to me,” she says of Rudd, who regularly hit the floors of her “dirty south London flat” during that period. “But theater has always been more about seeing beyond the welcome you give when you walk in the door.”
In those days, Rudd was also clear about what he didn’t want to do, which included things like pilot season, an annual ritual in which hundreds of actors descend on Los Angeles to try out a new batch of TV shows for the year. He wasn’t interested in working out, and wasn’t keen on participating in the series. “I was terrified of getting something that might be seen, something that might brand me and make me famous before I really knew enough to be able to maintain my career,” he says. He spent the entirety of the 1990s on the Fox sitcom Wild oats Scared to death of becoming a hit. (Spoiler: It only lasted four episodes.) In hindsight, he says he’s grateful for the experience, because it taught him what he didn’t want from his career.
“I look at that kid who was like, ‘No, I’m moving to New York and turning down these job offers’ — oh my God, I would even audition for stuff, get it and then say, ‘I don’t know if I want to do this’ — and I’m jealous of the clarity I had at the time,” says Rod, who has found other ways to pay the rent, including working as a bar mitzvah DJ. “But I had no one to support me at that time. My life and my considerations were completely different.”
***
For many years, the lock screen on Rudd’s phone bore the 20th Century Fox logo with swirling spotlights, and instead of the studio’s name, three simple words: “Nobody Cares.” It was a reminder to him not to take any of this too seriously: the party, the disruption, the competition. “Ninety-nine percent of the world doesn’t care about the film industry anyway,” he says. “They don’t even see these things.”
Meanwhile, Rudd has long been chasing one form of acceptance. He thinks it started when his younger sister was born, and suddenly he was competing for… He caught the attention of his mother, who works in the advertising industry, and father, who works as an airline executive. “I realized that if I could do a little dance or something, they would say: ‘Oh, look at our baby!’ And he would say: ‘I liked it, so I kept doing it.’ “And that’s what I still do – it has nothing to do with the ‘craft’; You do everything you can to make people like you and say, “You’re cute, you’re funny, you’re doing a good job.” ”
As the new kid in Kansas City, Kansas, and perhaps the only one in his class with British-born Jewish parents, Rudd found that humor was the quickest route to acceptance. By the time he moved to Los Angeles for acting school, he had added other colors. Adam Scott, who was two years behind him, insists that everyone there seemed to understand that Rudd was on the verge of stardom, and not just because he landed a Nintendo commercial straight out of school, although that was a big deal.
“I was at a movie premiere ignorant “I went out with him in Malibu, and it came on this big screen on the beach, and immediately I was like, ‘Oh, Paul’s going to be famous now.’ to cut The star who remains one of Rudd’s closest friends. “And of course everything changed after that.” The velvet ropes parted. “Suddenly, we could walk into any bar. It was like: ‘Oh shit, what’s going on?’ “This is unbelievable.”
Despite the impact it had on his career, Rudd did not fight for his role in it ignorant. In fact, he was more interested in playing Cher’s gay friend, Christian, or Dionne’s boyfriend, Murray. He did not realize that the latter had been written as a black character. As for the first: “I remember reading it, like, ‘Wait a minute, this is a gay character, who’s also the coolest character in the movie? I’ve never seen that before and it’s the most interesting part,” he says. The director, Amy Heckerling, let him read for the role as well as Cher’s older, smarter former half-brother turned love interest, Josh, who landed it. “But after the audition was done,” he says, “I wasn’t on the phone with my agents, asking, ‘Did I get it? Did I get it?’ ”
It would be several more years before Rudd found a movie that spoke to his feelings, which is what happened with Hot, humid American summer. “I know ignorant It was funny, but that was it for me “He felt it the moment he read the script, and his instincts were validated when he arrived at an actual summer camp to make the film with a group that included Amy Poehler, Bradley Cooper and Molly Shannon,” he says of the 2001 entry, a spoof of 1980s-era summer camp and teen sex comedy.
Hot wet Didn’t hit the road ignorant It was, but it led to more comedy, including announcerwhich Rudd says obsessively pursued him in a way he had never chased anything before. He didn’t even care what role he had in Will Ferrell’s irreverent comedy, as long as he was part of the cast. “I don’t really fight for a lot of things, but I was a nuisance in my desperate desire to be a part of it, and at a certain point I think I undermined them,” Rudd says.
if ignorant Make Rod endearing, announcer He earned his place in what became the new comedy Brat Pack, alongside actors like Steve Carell, Seth Rogen, and Jason Segel. (“I’m not really the guy people talk about,” says Rudd, “but it’s like I’m always there.”) Judd Apatow, the group’s unofficial leader, was so enamored with Rudd—who, he says, “has this ability to play it completely straight and can be tough and even tough ‘rtbreaking but also really funny at the same time”—that he cast him in his first directorial feature, 40 year old virginwhich was released the following summer. Apatow’s only request was that Rudd gain weight for the role. “I told him, ‘If you’re cool, I don’t think it’s going to work that well,’ but after a week [into filming,] The studio had a bunch of notes and one of them was: “Why is Paul Rudd so overweight?” Translation: Rod is allowed to be funny, as long as he still looks like Josh ignorant.
More devotional comedies followed: I knocked, I love you, man and Our foolish brother among them. Hard-R’s laughs weren’t the path Rod envisioned for himself, but it was fun. In fact, he kept saying yes to the next project, and then the next, and suddenly comedy was his way. “And it’s not like I got all the job offers for this part of the serial killer,” he joked. “So, maybe that agent was right. Maybe I don’t have any merit and this is what I was supposed to do. But it’s also weird – sometimes with comedies, they’re seen as a little more frivolous than important films and important actors.”
Does that bother him at all?
“No, I made peace with that a long time ago,” he says. “I don’t give a shit.” He stops himself. Pause. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
Another pause. “I mostly don’t care.” Then a hint of a smile: “Part of me is bothering me.”
***
In case it wasn’t obvious, a Marvel superhero was never on Rudd’s vision board. In fact, he still finds it a bit ridiculous that he, a self-described “avatar of mediocrity,” would be chosen as one of these, even though Marvel boss Kevin Feige insists he had everything Ant-Man, the wisecracking thief turned reluctant hero, needed. “We wanted this guy to be a criminal but also someone you root for no matter what, and that’s Paul,” Feige says. “He’s also funny, handsome and incredibly charismatic.”
However, Rudd says he didn’t sign on because he was eager to star in a Marvel movie. “For me, it was Edgar [Wright] “He says. “At the time, the British auteur was attached to direct the film, which he had been developing for years already. “And I was excited, like, ‘You mean it Shaun of the Dead The man does this and wants I To be in it? Well, this is what I can do — this is my path.’ Obviously that changed, in pre-production, but that was my leitmotif.
Rather than quit working with Wright—which, according to Figg, was a very real concern—Rud not only took on the project, but also recruited his own team. announcer Director Adam McKay for his help in getting the script through. “The idea I had was: If this can be something really successful and people see it, maybe it will help me get funding for some interesting little things, and I can have a little more control over what comes next,” Rod says. His only previous experience in anything of this size and global reach was playing Phoebe’s boyfriend friendsbut he was just a recurring guest star at the time.
For the first time in Rod’s life, he had to get into Marvel shape, which means “cutting out anything fun”, in terms of diet, and a punishing exercise regime. The results played into the popular narrative that Rudd appears to be aging in reverse. “I was starting to look like I could be his mother,” says Coleman, who is five years younger. “It’s really annoying, and he won’t share his secrets.” (Rodd insists he has none, and jokes: “I’m a jaded 80-year-old on the inside, and I’m catching up on the outside, too.”)
What Rudd didn’t anticipate was the degree to which he would spend the next decade of his life producing or promoting a Marvel movie. His first foray as Ant-Man led to two more standalone films and three feature films Avengers Movies, including upcoming ones Avengers: Doomsdaywhere Feige says he’s playing “more of an elder statesman now, dealing with other, newer characters.” Ant-Man also has his own theme park at Hong Kong Disneyland. Rudd was present alongside Fiji at its opening ceremony.
As he had hoped, he was able to create other things. Sure, there have been more flops at the studio’s big franchises, including a couple of… Ghost hunter films. (“Life sometimes e (I’m just gathering experience,” he says.) But he’s also put his strength behind smaller projects, including a few A24 films (Friendship, The death of a rhinoceros), along with silenta Duncan Jones-esque sci-fi drama that he did largely because he was finally playing a seriously serious character. Some worked better than others, though Rod was too kind to start complaining about the ones he regretted.
I think Tina Fey said it best when she was like, “Sometimes you do something and you think the script was great and it really works and then you watch it, and suddenly the credits roll, and you go, ‘Wow, this person shrank in the laundry.’” And he shrugs: “I’ve been in a lot of things that have shrunk in the laundry.”
***
Our waiter had just come over to pour a fresh cup of black coffee, Rod’s third in as many hours. He’ll pay for the caffeine shot later, but he’s between projects right now and has nowhere to go, which seems to really interest him. For someone who works as much as Rod does, he’s quite content with not working.
“The ultimate happiness for me is having everyone I love under one roof, maybe walking around this wonderful city, then sleeping at 8 or 9 at night and watching movies.” Antiques campaign “With my wife,” he says with a laugh, “I mean, gosh, people don’t think I’m getting old? Listen to me.”
Now that his children are grown — daughter Darby is 16, son Jack is 21 — he plans to do another play, his first in more than a decade. Rod stopped when life got busy and his children, who were young at the time, objected to their father’s absence. In fact, he can still recall the heartbroken look on his daughter’s face when she asked him, “Dad, do you really have to go back on stage again tonight?” And now? “Oh, now you’re like, ‘I don’t care, I have homework,'” Rod says.
But before any play or any other project, he has to announce himself Power song. He had a ball at making the movie. This part, selling it, is what doesn’t come naturally, or even comfortably. It all seems inauthentic, which makes him crazy. “I really want to be a respected actor,” he says. “I want people to think I’m good. I want to be in things that people think are great. I want to be the kind of actor that was always my favorite actors growing up.”
So I ask him, does he feel he achieved that?
“I don’t know,” he says, and pauses again. “I don’t touch it.”
As it was made Power songIt becomes clear, says Carney: “Paul doesn’t really consider himself a big movie star — he considers himself a professional actor who just happens to have this face.” But, as the director noted, as soon as Rudd signed on to the project, other actors became interested in it, and the money was suddenly released and the Irish Film Board joined. Whether he can see it or not, he is the lottery.
However, Carney sympathizes. “There’s a version of each of us that didn’t quite work out the way the weird police version of our 20-year-old selves thought it did,” he says. “I mean, every time I’m called a ‘crowd-pleasing filmmaker’, I’m like, ‘What happened?’ “I thought you were going to be Jean-Luc Godard.”
Apatow saw an early screening of the film, and in addition to being impressed by Rudd’s musical talent — yes, he really sings and plays guitar, which, according to Jonas, “felt easy and perfect from day one on set” — he was thrilled with the dramatic opportunity the role offered his friend. “When you watch it, you feel the whole history of frustration of this performer, and Paul is masterful at taking that pain,” Apatow says. “So, sure, he can do all the lighter colours, but, like many great comedians, we feel like there’s more going on there, and the darker sides of his character are what make him so great to watch.”
Despite the glowing reviews, it’s impossible to predict whether anyone will go see it or not Power song in theaters, which is less a commentary on the film than an increasingly fragmented state of the entertainment industry. Regardless, it’s the kind of movie Rudd wants in the world right now. “I just want to feel hopeful, and the thing I love about John Carney’s films is that you walk away from them, and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, that was a really emotional journey and it moved me,'” he says. “But there’s also joy in that, and I seek that out now more than ever because of the crushing weight of everything else that’s so bad.”
He looks up from his coffee cup. “I want to be optimistic,” he says, then pauses. “I want to laugh. I want to not be so serious about certain things.” He smiles. It’s as if Paul Rudd wants to be the man you think he is, too.
This story appeared in the June 3 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
