Paul Rudd is one of the most beloved celebs in Hollywood. He’s funny, crazy likable, and just so damn down-to-earth.
But there’s more to this actor than just his reputation. Did you know that he once paid tribute to his late father during SNL ? Or that he was once mugged during Clueless ?
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For all this and more, here are 10+ interesting facts fans didn’t know about Paul Rudd.
1. He paid a sweet tribute to his dad during his first time hosting *SNL*:
This was not long after his father had died from cancer.
To pay tribute to him , Rudd grabbed the shirt he was wearing with both hands (it was his father’s shirt from the navy) and then looked up to the ceiling and blew a kiss.
2. He got to throw first pitch at a Royals game with Rob Riggle and Jason Sudeikis:
“They put us in uniforms, like full-on Royals uniforms, which was awesome,” Rudd told Vulture .
“Rob has always had this kind of strapping, barrel-chested, fifties father physique.”
He continued by saying:
“And Rob put his on and he looked like a third-base coach. He looked like a manager. We all just kept calling him Mr. Riggle. I did not look like I was on the team. I looked like a bat boy.”
3: *Wet Hot American Summer* helped him fine-tune his comedy skills:
“It was the most fun ever,” he told Vulture .
“We were all friends. We all stayed and lived on the camp. Up until that movie, I had never worked on any comedy that was really my own sense of humor.”
While *Clueless* was fun too, he called *Wet Hot American Summer* the “first subversive thing I ever got to do.”
“It was shot for a million dollars and I remember Zak Orth was saying, ‘You know, I don’t even know if this thing would ever even come out. I just want to be able to have a videotape of it’ – this was pre-DVD. And that’s what we all thought.”
4. He considers *Friends* one of his big breaks:
In case you don’t recall, he played Mike, who ended up being the husband of Phoebe after a lot of ups and downs in their relationship.
Personally, I think he’s one of the best side characters that the show ever had.
He said about his experience:
“I’d been a working actor for some 10 odd years, and I just knew that doing just one episode of Friends , more people were going to see that than everything that I’d ever done, combined, times a billion,” he told The Independent in 2013.
5. Aging or dying doesn’t scare him:
Maybe that’s why he looks so young ?
“I’m not surprised by anything because I really just feel as if I’m on a slow, steady course to, just, destruction in every facet of my body and mind. My body is like a sandcastle. It can only take so many waves.”
“It used to be, ‘hold up wait a minute, don’t I know you? You’re that guy!'”
“I was a ‘that guy’ actor. Then all of a sudden they knew my name.”
He also told the publication that the kind of parties he gets into is also a measure of fame.
6. He lives a very private life:
This is probably why most people don’t know that he’s been married since 2003 to Julie Yaeger.
Or that he has two kids, Jack and Darby. His love of privacy is what keeps him so down-to-earth.
He once admitted in an interview with *Independent*:
“In my private life I’m dealing with all the scars and traumas and real stuff from living my real life. When I’m in public, I’m giving a very filtered, smooth version of it.”
7. He’s done serious films:
This comedic actor has serious range.
Some of the more serious films he’s been in include Prince Avalanche , The Cider House Rules , and Romeo + Juliet .
Don’t underestimate this fella!
8. He originally wanted to be an artist:
He told GQ that if this didn’t happen, then he wanted to be a graphic artist. But everything changed when he went to speech class and met an inspiring teacher.
It was then that he decided to be an actor.
9. He once worked on a movie with Courtney Love:
This was for the movie, 200 Cigarettes . In typical Rudd style, he had nothing but sweet things to say.
“I knew her music before I met her,” he told the Harvard Crimson .
12. The *Ant-Man* star continued on:
“But if you’ve ever seen interviews with her, she’s actually a very sweet person. I really like her. She cares deeply about what she does. Even if she can take flippant attitudes.”
10. He has eyelid dandruff:
The actor discovered this when he took a journalist with him to the eye doctor in 2010.
There, he was diagnosed with blepharitis or eye dandruff. He’s also nearsighted and has an astigmatism.
11. He grew up in Kansas:
“It seemed a weird match,” he said .
“But there is something I really, really loved about growing up there, and something I love about going back. I think the people do seem genuinely happier. They seem nicer.”
13. He was mugged during the filming of *Clueless*:
This happened the night before filming the Bosstones party.
Rudd had just gone out for dinner with some friends when a man jumped out at the group and put a gun next to his head.
He goes, ‘You don’t think this is a real gun?'” Paul said.
“He was all tweaked out on something, and he shot his gun next to my head.”
In the end, the robber got away with the actor’s backpack, which had a copy of the Clueless script and his Discman!
14: He never wanted to be a comedian:
“I didn’t want to just do specifically comedy. I still don’t want to just specifically do comedy,” he once told Vulture .
“I never went to Second City. I didn’t do stand up. I studied classical theater. That was my thing.”
15. Ben Affleck almost nabbed his role of Josh in *Clueless*:
Thankfully, this didn’t happen. But Rudd did want to go out for the role of Murray. Pretty soon after, he learned why he couldn’t.
“I didn’t realize that the character was African-American,” Rudd said .
16. He had to breathe through a tube for a scene in his Netflix show, *Living With Yourself*:
In the first scene where he bursts naked and hyperventilating from a grave, it was actually very difficult for him to film.
“Filming that was awful,” he said.
“It was the weirdest thing I’ve ever had to film. I’m not so claustrophobic really, but something within us knows that it’s not the right thing to be buried alive. There was a tube that went underground so I could breathe.”
How wild is that? I’d never be able to pull that off.
17. He thinks comedy is going through a rough patch in Hollywood:
“It’s a tough time for comedy. You hear some comics that used to play colleges all the time. They don’t want to do that anymore, because there’s no room for any kind of daring comedy,” he said.
Despite that, he greatly appreciates the conversations that come from how comedy is being interpreted by people.
“There’s more of a conversation about how something might be interpreted. Being aware of how a person might feel marginalised because of their sex, or because of their sexual preference, or because of their sexual identity… there are conversations happening now that have never happened, and that is incredible. It’s a great, great thing. It’s an awesome thing.”
18. He is a huge fan of tea.
“Tea! Tea has always been a big thing in my life. And I’m not talking about Liptons with lemon or iced tea, or any of that nonsense. Has to be hot PG Tips with milk. So growing up [in the States], it was a constant struggle …”
19. He figured out early on in his childhood how to fit in with others.
“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 said.
He continued:
“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.”
20. He is heavily inspired by his parents:
“They told me I could be anything I wanted to be, but I had to work hard for it. They also provided a home in which I could believe in myself, so when I was starting out I felt like I was able to conquer the world,” he said.
“Of course, I was completely naive and couldn’t [laughs], but I have to believe that was because I knew I was supported emotionally and in every other way by my mom and dad. Both my parents were very funny and realistic.”
“My dad was a history fanatic and a really outspoken liberal who was always writing letters to newspapers, arguing about all sorts of backward issues in his estimation of this country. So I was surrounded by this kind of truth to power attitude and a tenacity.”
Do you know any more interesting things about Paul Rudd?
Or were you happily surprised by all of these cool facts that we laid out for you?
Either way, let us know down below in the comments section! We would love to hear from you!
