Facts That Prove, Conclusively, Paul Rudd Is The Most Charming Human Man Alive

When Rudd learned he would host SNL for the first time, his dad was excited but was sick from cancer and died shortly before Rudd hosted. At the end of the show, during the closing credits, Rudd held out the front of his shirt - he was wearing his father’s Navy shirt -  and looked up and blew a kiss. 
 
 

When Rudd appears on any Conan show, he’s supposed to show a clip of his latest movie. But every time, he shows the very same clip of Eric, played by Jade Calegory, in a wheelchair going over a cliff into a lake with Mac looking on. Rudd brings the same clip from the ‘80s flop every single time. That’s 15 years of pranking Conan O’Brien.

Rudd’s mom still lives there and he visits often. Rob Riggle and Jason Sudeikis are also from Kansas City and the three of them hosted a charity poker event for a children’s hospital. They also got to throw out the first pitch at a Royals game.  

“They put us in uniforms, like full-on Royals uniforms, which was awesome,” said Rudd. “Rob has always had this kind of strapping, barrel-chested, fifties father physique. 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.” 

When the Royals won the AL Championship Series in 2015, he made a joke on the local news inviting fans to a kegger at his mom's house, and a few fans actually took him up on the offer. The fans were turned away, but he did offer a rain check if the Royals won the World Series.

“It was the most fun ever,” he said. “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. I mean, Clueless is smart, but Wet Hot American Summer was 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.”
 
 

On an eye doctor’s visit, with a journalist in tow, Rudd was told that his eyes were getting worse. 

“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 some many waves.” His acceptance of death has made him appear ageless. Constant comments about his baby face abound. 

Parties have been a gauge of where he is on the success timeline. As Rudd told The Independent in 2013, “I'm very much aware, in the last few years, how the stuff I've done has been more visible than the stuff I ever did. I remember feeling that with Friends. 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.” 

“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.”

Rudd was trained in theatre and it shows. He studied drama at the University of Kansas, got a Spencer Tracy Scholarship to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Los Angeles. Plus, he studied at Oxford University’s British Drama Academy.  

He produced a play at the Globe Theatre, Howard Brenton’s Bloody Poetry. And played Hamlet, directed by Ben Kingsley. He’s appeared on Broadway. 

His dramatic work in film is also remarkable. Just check him out in Prince Avalanche. Or The Cider House Rules, Diggers, or Romeo + Juliet. Rudd has some serious chops.  

They have remained friends since they were kids. He’s also known for being a good friend to many such as Jason Segel, Adam Scott, Jennifer Aniston, and Amy Poehler.
 
 

In his quest to learn everything about comedy, he collected Martin's albums and all things Steve Martin.  
 

Rudd's feature film debut role was in Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers. He played Tommy Doyle.

Because he still has the sense of humor of a 14-year-old boy, Paul Rudd can fart through an Ant-Man promotional interview and still be utterly charming. 

And that’s a big thing to say, considering many of the others who work in Hollywood. It’s probably that K.C. thing but it’s also just in Rudd’s DNA. He’s a nice guy.
 
 

A teacher who taught speech steered him toward acting. 
  

Because Rudd loved anything and everything about Steve Martin, he particularly liked the names Martin came up with. At a dinner party, he remarked that he loved the name Gern Blanston. Someone explained that Apatow had an email address that was similar. Rudd had never met Apatow but sent him an email because of their shared love of Gern Blanston.  

When Rudd told this story during an interview, Martin sent him a copy of his memoir, Born Standing Up. He signed it as “Gern.” "It's one of the greatest things I've ever gotten in my life," said Rudd. "That was definitely one of those life moments." 

In 2010, Rudd took a journalist with him to an eye doctor appointment with Dr. Harvey Moscot, who is also Fred Armisen, Justin Theroux, and Jason Schwartzman’s eye doctor. Rudd has blepharitis, or eye dandruff, and it has to be treated with medicated pads. He also has an astigmatism and is nearsighted.  

While getting his eyes examined, Rudd looked to the journalist and said, “If you do another piece on me, we will go get my teeth cleaned."

Rudd played Nicholson’s son in Everything You’ve Got. In the film, they are the type of father and son that kiss when they say hello and good-bye. When they first met, “[Nicholson] just swept into the room, kissed me on the lips, laughed, and sat down. It was hilarious. He’s Jack Nicholson. Where do you go from there?”  

He’s been married since 2003 to Julie Yaeger. He has two kids, Jack and Darby. You won’t find him airing his stuff on Twitter. As he has said about his celebrity appeal, “I don’t think I’m going to sell a lot of tabloids.”

As a kid, he asked his mother to shave back his hairline in order to achieve Ant’s look. She wouldn’t do it.

Rudd's parents were born in England and he has fond memories the country.

His parents were nonreligious Jewish liberals, but they enjoyed their move to Kansas. "It seemed a weird match," he’s 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."  

They worked together on 200 Cigarettes and he had nothing but nice things to say about Love.  

In a 1999 interview with the Harvard Crimson, Rudd spoke of his former co-star, saying: "I knew her music before I met her. 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."

He used to order Depeche Mode tapes from Europe, but that’s not all. Rudd described his love affair with the '80s by saying: “The first part of the ‘80s, up to the mid-‘80s, was kind of Hall and Oates, my hair was curly and I was really into my mullet. The second part of the ‘80s I was just such an INXS fan and I thought I'm going to so do what Michael Hutchence has done: grow my hair as long as I possibly can. In my mind I looked like Michael Hutchence, but if you look at the pictures I look nothing like him.” 
 
 

Rudd and a friend went to dinner at Jerry’s Deli in the Valley and a guy grabbed him. "This is a real gun," Rudd recalled the thief saying. "Watch out, because I'll f*cking kill you." Despite the fact that Rudd assured him that he thought he was telling the truth, the guy didn’t believe him. 

"You don't think it's a real gun" the guy said, and fired the gun at Rudd. The bullet went through Rudd's hair. Rudd didn’t have any cash but he gave them his backpack. "I just remember the sound of it," he says, recalling the bullet. "I remember people in the parking lot being really freaked out. But I just got very calm. Then I had to go to work the next day. It was a scene at a club. I was dancing. And I had just been shot at the night before." 

Check out the lemon yellow ruffled shirt and matching jacket with the black shorts. 

“I didn’t want to just do specifically comedy. I still don’t want to just specifically do comedy,” he has said. “I never went to Second City. I didn’t do stand up. I studied classical theater. That was my thing.” 
  
 

The series was written and created by Rudd, John Enbom, Rob Thomas, and Dan Etheridge. The show was quirky, funny, and filled with a lot of industry inside jokes. It also had a rad cast featuring Jane Lynch, Adam Scott, Martin Starr, Lizzy Caplan, Jennifer Coolidge, Megan Mullally, Ken Marino, and Ryan Hansen.  

Rudd and his friend, named Justin, had been doing a play together about Shelley and Byron when Justin was killed in a traffic accident in Los Angeles. Rudd was 24 and Justin was 22. The death affected Rudd greatly and he read a lot of soul-searching books from Siddhartha to Many Lives, Many Masters. 

Rudd was drawn to the role of Christian and asked to audition for it. He also tried for Elton and wasn’t the right fit. Then he tried for Murray, the hip hop wannabe. “I didn't realize that the character was African-American,” Rudd said.
 
It's hard to imagine Clueless without him as Josh. 
  
 

“Ugh. That’s worse than bromance or Nolita or rom-com or Brangelina. Never say it again.” 
 
 

When a man attacked another man during a homophobic rant at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, people jumped in to assist and restrain the man. Everyone thought Paul Rudd was one of those people, and though the man looked just like him, it was not Rudd.
 
 

When he was younger, he asked his mother to bleach the top of his hair blonde. She wouldn’t do it.