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It is almost two decades to the day since Paul Rudd first came to public attention and two things about him have remained unchanged since. The first， most obviously， is his face. Save for some faint lines on his forehead， Rudd looks unnervingly similar to how he did in Clueless， which celebrates its 20th anniversary next week and in which he played the love interest Josh.
The second is his personality： Paul Rudd is just so darn nice. Every interview he has done mentions this and every one of his co-stars says this about him （Amy Poehler recently described him to me in an interview as “Mr. Perfect”）.
By the time I finally meet up with Rudd， he has been stuck inside an airless London hotel room doing interviews for his performance as the eponymous Ant-Man， the latest superhero film in Marvel’s hugely lucrative stable， for more than eight hours， starting at 7 a.m. Yet in his trim suit and dark shirt he couldn’t look less ruffled and more psyched to see me， urging me to partake in refreshments （“No tea？ You sure？ But you must be so hot！”） and latching immediately on to my transatlantic accent. I’m not surprised that Rudd seizes on my accent—his parents were British Jews from Edgware and Surbiton， and while Rudd was born in New Jersey in 1969 and raised in the U.S.， he was often in Britain as a kid to visit relatives in London’s less glamorous suburbs and Basingstoke.
Part of Rudd’s reputation for niceness comes from his eagerness to self-deprecate—not a common trait among Hollywood celebrities—and I had lazily assumed this， too， was an inheritance from his English background. But Rudd puts his self-deprecation down to something more complicated than nationality. His father worked for the airline TWA and the family moved a lot， before settling in Kansas when he was 10.
“I was always in new schools and had British parents， which was not the norm， and I think there was also…I’m not particularly religious， but I was born Jewish and I always felt like the outsider because I wasn’t Christian or Catholic，” he says. “So I learned early on that I could be accepted if I made people laugh when I turned the joke on myself and， particularly in Kansas， if I made a joke about being Jewish， my friends would laugh really hard， harder than they perhaps should have.”
Yet he talks about his childhood， Kansas and， in particular， his family with enormous fondness， especially his father， who died six years ago and whom he idolised and references often in our time together. One of the defining memories of his younger years is watching his father crack up on the sofa while watching Monty Python， which planted the seed of him wanting to be a comedian and eventually an actor. Is his friendliness part of that desire to please or does that come from growing up in the midwest？ “There is something about growing up in the midwest that gives a different kind of sensibility，” he agrees. “But if I’m feeling insecure， the smiles and politeness get upped a notch， and maybe that isn’t totally reflective of how I’m feeling on the inside. But， you know， better to be thought of as a nice person than a dickhead.”
While there might be some truth to that， the man is too sweet for it to be just a twitch of insecurity. He doesn’t even wince when he is asked—for what must be the 10 billionth time in his life—about Clueless.“Honestly， I’m just happy to be involved with something that struck a chord with as many people as it did.”
Rudd could easily have been another cute guy in a 90s film whose career faded out of view in the next decade—another Freddie Prinze Jr， say， or， at best， a Josh Charles—and gives much thanks to Judd Apatow for the opportunities he’s been given. “So as far as having an impact on my career， it was really with Anchorman and then The 40 Year Old Virgin where I took a left turn.”
These films certainly rejuvenated Rudd’s career， but increasingly they started to look like they were trapping him. For every decent comedy in which he has appeared in the past decade， there have been plenty of meh ones （This is Forty， Our Idiot Brother） and too many terrible ones， too（Admission， Dinner for Schmucks， How Do You Know）.
“Over the last 10 years， I never made a very concerted effort to mix it up. I just wanted to work on things that I liked. But I think I was feeling some fatigue over that and wanted to try something different，” he says. And that brings us to Ant-Man.
While superhero movies are now part of Hollywood’s landscape， you would go through a lot of names before getting to Rudd’s when thinking of actors you would expect to add to the superhero roster. As Rudd says himself：“I knew being in this would make people say： ‘What？ Really？’” But this is partly why he works in the film—after all， a movie about a man whose special power is that he becomes ant-sized is not calling for a classic macho man. And Rudd will appear as Ant-Man in Captain America： Civil War and may well join the rest of the Avengers in future Marvel Universe adventures. After nailing teen romances in the 90s and fratty comedies in the earlier 2000s， the third and equally zeitgeisty part to Rudd’s career may well be starting with superheroes.
The second is his personality： Paul Rudd is just so darn nice. Every interview he has done mentions this and every one of his co-stars says this about him （Amy Poehler recently described him to me in an interview as “Mr. Perfect”）.
By the time I finally meet up with Rudd， he has been stuck inside an airless London hotel room doing interviews for his performance as the eponymous Ant-Man， the latest superhero film in Marvel’s hugely lucrative stable， for more than eight hours， starting at 7 a.m. Yet in his trim suit and dark shirt he couldn’t look less ruffled and more psyched to see me， urging me to partake in refreshments （“No tea？ You sure？ But you must be so hot！”） and latching immediately on to my transatlantic accent. I’m not surprised that Rudd seizes on my accent—his parents were British Jews from Edgware and Surbiton， and while Rudd was born in New Jersey in 1969 and raised in the U.S.， he was often in Britain as a kid to visit relatives in London’s less glamorous suburbs and Basingstoke.
Part of Rudd’s reputation for niceness comes from his eagerness to self-deprecate—not a common trait among Hollywood celebrities—and I had lazily assumed this， too， was an inheritance from his English background. But Rudd puts his self-deprecation down to something more complicated than nationality. His father worked for the airline TWA and the family moved a lot， before settling in Kansas when he was 10.
“I was always in new schools and had British parents， which was not the norm， and I think there was also…I’m not particularly religious， but I was born Jewish and I always felt like the outsider because I wasn’t Christian or Catholic，” he says. “So I learned early on that I could be accepted if I made people laugh when I turned the joke on myself and， particularly in Kansas， if I made a joke about being Jewish， my friends would laugh really hard， harder than they perhaps should have.”
Yet he talks about his childhood， Kansas and， in particular， his family with enormous fondness， especially his father， who died six years ago and whom he idolised and references often in our time together. One of the defining memories of his younger years is watching his father crack up on the sofa while watching Monty Python， which planted the seed of him wanting to be a comedian and eventually an actor. Is his friendliness part of that desire to please or does that come from growing up in the midwest？ “There is something about growing up in the midwest that gives a different kind of sensibility，” he agrees. “But if I’m feeling insecure， the smiles and politeness get upped a notch， and maybe that isn’t totally reflective of how I’m feeling on the inside. But， you know， better to be thought of as a nice person than a dickhead.”
While there might be some truth to that， the man is too sweet for it to be just a twitch of insecurity. He doesn’t even wince when he is asked—for what must be the 10 billionth time in his life—about Clueless.“Honestly， I’m just happy to be involved with something that struck a chord with as many people as it did.”
Rudd could easily have been another cute guy in a 90s film whose career faded out of view in the next decade—another Freddie Prinze Jr， say， or， at best， a Josh Charles—and gives much thanks to Judd Apatow for the opportunities he’s been given. “So as far as having an impact on my career， it was really with Anchorman and then The 40 Year Old Virgin where I took a left turn.”
These films certainly rejuvenated Rudd’s career， but increasingly they started to look like they were trapping him. For every decent comedy in which he has appeared in the past decade， there have been plenty of meh ones （This is Forty， Our Idiot Brother） and too many terrible ones， too（Admission， Dinner for Schmucks， How Do You Know）.
“Over the last 10 years， I never made a very concerted effort to mix it up. I just wanted to work on things that I liked. But I think I was feeling some fatigue over that and wanted to try something different，” he says. And that brings us to Ant-Man.
While superhero movies are now part of Hollywood’s landscape， you would go through a lot of names before getting to Rudd’s when thinking of actors you would expect to add to the superhero roster. As Rudd says himself：“I knew being in this would make people say： ‘What？ Really？’” But this is partly why he works in the film—after all， a movie about a man whose special power is that he becomes ant-sized is not calling for a classic macho man. And Rudd will appear as Ant-Man in Captain America： Civil War and may well join the rest of the Avengers in future Marvel Universe adventures. After nailing teen romances in the 90s and fratty comedies in the earlier 2000s， the third and equally zeitgeisty part to Rudd’s career may well be starting with superheroes.