The underrated everyman

Thirteen years after he entered our lives as a wisecracking stepbrother to Alicia Silverstone in “Clueless,” Paul Rudd walks from his Lower Manhattan home in much the same way he's strolled through Hollywood ever since that seminal 90s film: noticed but untroubled, his face more familiar than his name or biography.

He enters a favorite diner and finds a seat, 39 years old now, a husband of six years and father to a 3-year-old son. He also has a slew of credits to his name – in the last decade he's performed on Broadway and on your TV set (remember who Phoebe eventually married?), and, more recently, he's played scene stealer to some of today's comedy giants: Will Ferrell in “Anchorman”, Steve Carell in “The 40 Year Old Virgin,” Seth Rogen in “Knocked Up.”

This week he takes on “Role Models,” another adult comedy that he also co-wrote, playing an unhappy salesman who's forced into community service at a mentoring program for kids. Rudd himself is New Jersey-born and Kansas City-raised, and he worked as a DJ at bar mitzvahs and a glazer of hams before “Clueless” came along. And so we ask, how exactly did he get here?

Rudd: Many things worked out in my favor, and I owe it in all part to my parents. They're English immigrants, so no one worked in the entertainment business and my dad probably thought it'd be important to get a real job but he never pushed it, ever. And I remember having a kind of heart-to-heart with him in my early 20s. We were going through a particularly rough patch, financially and everything, and he just said, You know, the people that I admire are just people who contribute to the world in some way, that try to make it better by the time they leave it. Like doctors, scientists, writers… and then he said actors. He was really sweet – he included me in that group. 

You're a dad now. What's early fatherhood like? Any surprises?

It's great, and it is a surprise. It's just fun to be around a 3-year-old, and their interests are really fascinating and funny, and the stuff they say is great. It's nice to be around that kind of innocence and joy. 

What kind of interests does your son have?

He loves music. And he loves fountains.

 What about your own interests or obsessions? A friend of mine claims to have seen you doing karaoke not long ago.

Yeah, that's probably true. I love it. It's not like an Asian businessman kind of obsession [laughs], but I do it more than probably ... others. Especially in New York, where you can go to these places and just rent out the rooms, it's just a fun place to go have some beer and say, “Oh, what lost 70s classic can I bring out of these people? Ooh! Chevy Van!”

Suppressing any desire for a singing crossover?

No! Not at all, no. I'm not a singer. ... What did your friend say? I mean, I'm not looking for a critique…

You sure?

You know what? Let's move on. 

Ok, how about James Bond? Your new film goes up against the latest version.

I bet they're shaking in their boots. 

Let's talk about you vs. Bond.

You mean how do I stack up against Daniel Craig? Besides the fact that if you saw our silhouetted bodies against a scrim, you'd still be able to decipher who's who?

What – you don't think you could ever play Bond? I think you could bring a certain...

.... everyman quality? [laughs] You know what's funny? No one even called me with an audition.

You keep showing up in these big comedies, though, after being more of a dramatic actor early in your career.

It's really fun. And there's something, you know, historically, (that) whenever a country was at war, the comedies did better. I think working on these movies at this moment in my life, it's just fun.

So when you mention comedies doing well in wartime, do you feel like this current boom of adult comedies that you've largely been a part of stems a bit from...

That we're depressed?

Well, yeah.

In some ways I do. I also think that, you know, there's a certain generation that's now seeing movies and their voice is probably represented in ways that it wasn't before. ...  And yeah, we are in such crazy, crazy debt, people are getting killed, we're paying five dollars a gallon. Me? I just want to go laugh.

© USA Weekend, November 1, 2008

Photo By Gage Skidmore - https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/14612515288/, CC BY-SA 2.0