Paul Rudd

Paul Rudd (birthname: Paul Stephen Rudd) is a multifaceted actor (as well as writer and producer) who has worked frequently with filmmaker Judd Apatow, has taken on the comedy-tinged superhero of Ant-Man, and has voiced several animated film roles, starting with a part in writer-director Amy Heckerling’s hit teen comedy, Clueless (1995), starring Alicia Silverstone. Rudd was credited by his full name in a lead role in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995), the sixth entry in the Halloween franchise, with Donald Pleasance, Marianne Hagan, Mitch Ryan, and Kim Darby.

Rudd played Juliet’s spurned fiancé named “Dave Paris” in Baz Luhrmann’s modernized Shakespeare, Romeo + Juliet (1996), co-starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, grossing over ten times costs with a $148 million global gross after premiering at the Berlin Film Festival, where DiCaprio won best actor and Luhrmann won the Alfred Bauer Prize. Rudd joined the colorful ensemble of Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce, Molly Shannon, Christopher Meloni, Amy Poehler, Bradley Cooper, and Elizabeth Banks in the cult comedy from co-writer/director David Wain, Wet Hot American Summer (2001).

Paul Rudd then re-created his co-starring role from writer-director Neil LaBute’s stage play for the film version of The Shape of Things (2003), with Gretchen Mol, Rachel Weisz, and Fred Weller. Rudd’s feature debut as a writer-actor was in the brilliant comedy, Role Models (2008), which marked Rudd’s reunion with writer-director David Wain, and also featured Seann William Scott, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jane Lynch, and Elizabeth Banks, and which proved to be a smash hit for Universal Pictures with a global take of $92.4 million.

Rudd followed with another successful studio comedy, I Love You, Man (2009), co-written and directed by John Hamburg and co-starring Jason Segel, with Rashida Jones, Andy Samberg, J.K. Simmons, Jane Curtin, Jon Favreau, and Jaime Pressley, and earning $92.3 million for distributor Paramount Pictures. Rudd has had many collaborations with comedy filmmaker Judd Apatow including Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), Knocked Up (2007), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), This is 40 (2012), and Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013).

Paul Rudd soon landed the durable, off-beat superhero starring role of Ant-Man/Scott Lang in the Ant-Man franchise, starting with the Peyton Reed-directed Ant-Man (2015); the Anthony and Joe Russo-directed Captain America: Civil War (2016); director Reed’s Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018); the Russo Brothers-directed Avengers: Endgame (2019); and the Reed-directed $275-million-budgeted Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023); Rudd additionally co-wrote Ant-Man with Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, and Adam McKay, and co-wrote the script of Ant-Man and the Wasp with Chris McKenna, Erik Sommers, Andrew Barrer, and Gabriel Ferrari.

Rudd has co-starred in another franchise, the Ghostbusters series, as Gary in the series revival Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)—directed by Jason Reitman–and then in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024), directed by Gil Kenan and co-written by Kenan and Reitman, with Finn Wolfhard, Carrie Coon, Mckenna Grace, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Ernie Hudson. Rudd has contributed voice performances to a long roster of largely successful animated movies, including Monsters vs. Aliens (2009), The Little Prince (2015), Sausage Party (2016), Nerdland (2016), The Bob’s Burgers Movie (2022), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023).

Paul Rudd has starred in several American indie features, including writer-director Stephen Chbosky’s feature adaptation of his 1999 novel, The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), with Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, Ezra Miller, Dylan McDermott, and Joan Cusack; director-writer David Gordon Green’s comedy-drama, Prince Avalanche (2013), with Emile Hirsch; the Sundance-premiering period drama, The Catcher Was a Spy (2018), with Mark Strong, Sienna Miller, Jeff Daniels, Tom Wilkinson, Giancarlo Giannini, Hiroyuki Sanada, Guy Pearce, and Paul Giamatti; director-writer Alex Scharfman’s black comedy, Death of a Unicorn (date to be announced), with Jenna Ortega, Will Poulter, and Richard E. Grant; writer-director Andrew DeYoung’s suburban comedy, Friendship (date to be announced), with Kate Mara; and The Invite (date to be announced) with Rudd co-starring with Amy Adams under Jonathan Dayton’s and Valerie Faris’s co-direction.