Paul Rudd interview: He's happy to have a job -- any job.

They are two very different, but equally impressive resumes.
One lists the credits of a serious stage actor, who trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, made his London debut in "Long Day's Journey Into Night" and originated the leads in such Neil LaBute plays as "The Shape of Things" and "Bash."
"I'm lucky to have worked with a lot of other good actors," says LaBute, whose new "Reasons to be Pretty" just debuted on Broadway. "But he could have done 'Fat Pig.' He could have done 'In the Company of Men.' He is really sort of the prototype for me." The other resume sums up the accomplishments of a gifted Hollywood comedian, whose movie career -- "Clueless," "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," "Knocked Up," "Role Models" -- pretty much reads like a list of the funniest hits of the last ten or so years.
"He is the classic comic leading man," says John Hamburg, director of the star's current "I Love You, Man." "He's not just reactive to the craziness around him. He really lets you see his soul, and the audience empathizes with him -- while taking great pleasure in his foibles."
The neat trick is that both resumes have the same 8-by-10 headshot stapled to the front, featuring the boyish face of Paul Rudd.
"It's funny, I never thought in terms of genre," says Rudd, who turns 40 next month. "I knew that I wanted to try different things, but the most important thing to me starting out was just to improve. All I really wanted to be was a working actor."
Make that hard-working actor.
Rudd was in four movies last year; this month alone brings two, the funny "I Love You, Man" (in which he plays a loner in search of a best friend) and Friday's eye-catching 3D cartoon "Monsters vs. Aliens" (in which he's the 50-foot-woman's boyfriend). Three other 2009 releases are in various stages of production, and Rudd's one of the behind-the-scenes creators of "Party Down," a TV comedy that just premiered on Starz.
"When you say it all together it sounds exhausting," Rudd jokes, when reminded of his projects. "Because honestly, I really don't like to work that much. I'm a big fan of not working."
If that's true, he lives in a pretty rigorous state of self-denial. Rudd's racked up more than 60 separate acting credits since his 1992 debut in an obscurity called "A Question of Ethics." He's developed a quietly effective comic persona, too -- the painfully self-conscious person whose constant mess-ups are matched by his continual, muttered self-criticisms.
"Embarrassment and awkward situations are not foreign things to me," says the slight, sly actor who once worked as a bar mitzvah DJ, doing what was billed as "the Dork Dance." "Anything traumatic in my life, I've always dealt with through jokes and comedy."
And by building a particularly strong network of friends, who happily rearrange their schedules just to call with a quote, an anecdote, a compliment.
"He's one of the great conversationalists," says Hamburg. "He can talk about Kansas City government, or a play he did in Louisville in 1999. Of course, some of it is the most inconsequential stuff but somehow that makes it even more endearing. I've known him for about 10 years and he's one of my favorite people."
"He's someone you can count on as a friend, and as a performer," says LaBute, who first met him, briefly, back in college. "He's a really nice guy, but he's also up for whatever crazy exploit I could come up with. ... He has never lost that kind of 'Our Gang' spirit of putting on a show."
"Well, I started loving this as a kid because of the attention," Rudd says. "I think that's why we all get into it, isn't it?"
Rudd was born in Passaic but grew up in Kansas; his father worked for an airline and his mother was a sales manager for a local TV station. Although Rudd did some school plays and speeches in high school, it wasn't until he got to the University of Kansas that he started doing serious drama -- or, at least, what pretentious college kids think of as serious drama.
"We did a version of 'Macbeth' that had multiple Macbeths walking around," Rudd says. "There was the Good Macbeth and the Bad Macbeth. I was the Good Macbeth. ... I mean, the director never wore shoes. It was that kind of production."
After graduation, Rudd went on to acting school, then television work, including a sitcom -- "Wild Oats" -- he hated so much he used to go home and spray paint obscenities on the walls of his own apartment. Then, however, he got a good part in "Clueless," as the dreamy stepbrother, and steady work on the sitcom "Sisters." Coupled with pleasant good looks, it was enough to establish him as an up-and-comer.
"I've been a comedy fan since I was a kid, although I didn't think that was the route I was going to go as an actor," he says. "But when I started, I just remembered hearing at school, 'If you act like it's funny, it won't be funny.' So I always approached everything from the character, focusing on the reality of the situation."
"That's the key," Hamburg agrees. "Paul's never trying to be funny. He's never winking at the audience."
Yet although he could have transitioned nicely into a mainstream comedy career -- with his own sitcom and a series of formulaic movies -- Rudd, instead, veered left. He did Baz Luhrmann's "Romeo + Juliet" and a TV production of "Twelfth Night." He starred in LaBute's twisting play of wrecked relationships, "The Shape of Things," and played a loathsome homophobe in LaBute's "Bash."
"The audience sees Paul as this funny, acerbic likable guy," says the playwright. "They welcome him, they see themselves in him, they feel comfortable around him. And I've used that to good effect in a lot of the work we've done together. You want to embrace him -- so I'll have him play a character who is not very embraceable."
Often that would translate into jobs that weren't very remunerative, either. Although Rudd's gotten his best reviews for his stage work, most of it was off-Broadway and none of it paid very much. At the start of the decade, he signed for a six-month run of a play in London only to realize that his bank account was exhausted.
"Up until that point, I had always been a little precious about my decisions," Rudd admits. "This time, I just called my agent and said 'I need a job. I don't care what it is, but it's got to be soon -- I don't know if I can pay my rent.' And a week later, I got a call saying, 'Well, there's this Cantonese action movie called 'Gen X Cops: 2'..."
Rudd signed the contract, got the check, paid his rent, and flew off to Hong Kong. The next day he had blond hair and a Hugo Boss suit, and was fighting a killer robot.
"There really wasn't anybody who could be more miscast in a Hong Kong action movie," he says. "So I just embraced it, because it was so weird. I had a great time. ... And when my wife saw it she said, 'You know, you look like Simon LeBon -- if Duran Duran had ever made a music video about killer robots.'"
Things picked up with a return to comedy, as a guest star on "Friends," and with a supporting part in "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" -- which, in turn, brought him into the busy orbit of producer/director/writer Judd Apatow, who's been involved in most of the comedies Rudd has done since (excepting, significantly, the awful "The Love Guru," in which Rudd did a jokey cameo).
"It really has a bit of a family atmosphere," Rudd says of the Apatow universe. "And it's not just the actors, where it's, 'Oh, great, there's Seth (Rogen), there's Jonah (Hill).' It's the crew, too. It's 'Hey, there's Bert, doing props. There's Clayton, the line producer.' They're all nice people, and Judd seems to encourage a lot of trust, and loyalty."
As a result, Rudd says, it's not just the movies that do well (and have a giddy feeling of controlled chaos because "Judd encourages you to go off the page"). The people in them succeed, too.
"A lot of rules have changed because of Judd," Rudd says. "A lot of us have been able to get parts in movies we never would have been considered for before. I was never supposed to write 'Role Models,' and was shocked that they would think I could, but I think a lot of it was because of my work with Judd. There's just this feeling that maybe you can do more."
Rudd wants to do even more, including plays and some more serious movies (among the many in-development projects: the story of Allen Ginsberg's obscenity trial, for "Howl"). But the New York actor also has a wife he wants to spend time with, and a 4-year-old son to play with. And there are only so many hours in the day.
"You don't get to necessarily guide your career as much as people think," he says. "Sometimes I'll hear people interviewed. 'Why did you want to do this movie?' And they'll say 'Oh, I wanted to mix things up, I wanted to explore this genre.' And I'll think, Yeah, right. You wanted to do this because you got the job."
Stephen Whitty may be reached atswhitty@starledger.com or (212) 790-4435.
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