Paul Rudd

Paul Rudd (born April 6, 1969, Passaic, New Jersey) is an American actor, film and television producer, and screenwriter best known for his comedy roles. He was often cast as a charismatic everyman. Rudd’s notable credits include Wet Hot American Summer (2001), Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2012), and Ant-Man (2015) and its sequels.

Early life

Rudd was the eldest of two children born to Michael and Gloria Rudd. His parents were both born in London to Jewish families, and Rudd was raised in Reform Judaism. His father worked for Trans World Airlines (TWA), and the family traveled extensively. When he was 10 years old, the family moved to Overland Park, Kansas, where his mother worked for a local television station as a sales manager. He was the student body president of his high school, graduating in 1987.

Rudd majored in theater at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, and, upon graduation, he moved to Los Angeles and pursued classical theater there at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Shortly thereafter he attended a three-month workshop of the British American Drama Academy on the campus of the University of Oxford and acted in a number of plays while in England.

Career

The breakthrough for his film career came with the role of the elder stepbrother in the teen comedy Clueless (1995). He then left Los Angeles for New York City, making his Broadway debut in the acclaimed The Last Night of Ballyhoo (1997–98); he would continue to live in New York, landing theater roles while simultaneously growing his film career. He had small parts in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) and in Romeo + Juliet (1996), with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, and played a more serious role as the gay best friend in the film The Object of My Affection (1998), opposite Jennifer Aniston.

Rudd’s other early films were an eclectic mix of genres, including the coming-of-age drama The Cider House Rules (1999), a science fiction action movie Gen-Y Cops (2000) made in Hong Kong, and the indie film The Château (2001). Despite its commercial failings, Wet Hot American Summer (2001) became a cult classic; Rudd would later appear in its long-awaited prequel Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, a made-for-TV miniseries, in 2015. In 2003 Rudd married publicist and screenwriter Julie Yaeger, and they had two children.

Often cast as a charismatic everyman, Rudd became a fan favorite in his recurring role as Mike Hannigan, Phoebe Buffay’s love interest, in the final two seasons (2002–04) of the popular sitcom Friends. His first collaboration with director and producer Judd Apatow and actors Will Ferrell and Steve Carell, in the madcap hit Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), proved to be an important step in Rudd’s film career. Rudd would go on to work with Apatow in a number of other comedies, including The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) with Carell, Knocked Up (2007), This Is 40 (2012), and Wanderlust (2012), which he coproduced. He worked again with Carell in Dinner for Schmucks (2010) and with Carell and Ferrell in the unsuccessful Anchorman sequel Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013).

Rudd’s other notable films included Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008); Role Models (2008), for which he cowrote the screenplay; I Love You, Man (2009); Our Idiot Brother (2011); The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012); Prince Avalanche (2013); They Came Together (2014); The Fundamentals of Caring (2016); and Ideal Home (2018).

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Among his theater credits were a major production of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (1998); the Off-Broadway premiere of Neil LaBute’s Bash: Latter-Day Plays (1999), with Calista Flockhart; a Broadway production of Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain (2006), with Julia Roberts and Bradley Cooper; and a Broadway production of Craig Wright’s Grace (2012–13).

His career took a major turn when he was asked to play wisecracking Scott Lang, the hero of Marvel’s Ant-Man (2015). Rudd earned writing credits for the film and its sequel, Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018), in which he also starred. He reprised the role for battle scenes in Captain America: Civil War (2016) and Avengers: Endgame (2019), which became the highest-grossing superhero movie in history. He and various others of his Avengers costars were among the top 10 highest-paid actors in 2019. He was also cast in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, released in 2023.

Known for his striking green eyes and seemingly ageless appearance, Rudd was named People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive in 2021. That same year he was the executive producer for the Netflix miniseries Living with Yourself, a comedy-drama in which he starred, and he collaborated again with Ferrell to produce and star in a dark miniseries drama, The Shrink Next Door. Rudd earned a coveted spot in the so-called “Five-Timers Club” for his fifth appearance as host of Saturday Night Live during its season finale in December 2021, where he joined other five-time SNL hosts Tom Hanks and Tina Fey.

Rudd’s other credits from 2021 include Ghostbusters: Afterlife, an installment in the popular comedy franchise about scientists investigating paranormal activity. He reprised his role as Gary Grooberson in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024). During this time Rudd also portrayed an egotistical actor in the third season (2023) of Only Murders in the Building, a popular Hulu series starring Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez.