Paul Rudd
I think that I identify with my role in pretty much everything I have tried to do. I try to find something that I can understand about each character's behavior.
I'm not actively seeking stardom. I just go to auditions, and I knock on wood.
I'm, uh, not proud to say it - I play fantasy baseball. It's, like, the dorkiest thing ever.
What's weird is that anybody can write anything, and once it goes online, it's permanent. My very first biography on IMDb, which was written by a manager I had at the time, was not true.
I try not to think of myself in any category, and I don't ever really try to imagine myself competing with another actor. I just know I want to do the things that I would want to see, and I know the things that turn me on, whether it's on the stage, or it's a play or a film. I just kind of want to keep doing my own thing.
I used to love, love Steve Martin. I still do... I would get these albums, and I would just listen to them all the time. I would stand in my room and pretend that I was delivering his comedy routine... And I don't know if that planted any kind of seed, but I wasn't raised going to the theatre.
To try and sustain a performance is always a challenge. Anything you work on, to try and be real and show up and not look as if I'm playing pat to anything is always work.
My definitions of comedy, drama, and straight man are all blurry for me. I don't think of it in those terms.
The truth is, there are so many terrific places in New York because it's the greatest city in the world, and there are so many fascinating places to see that, frankly, it's humbling.
Humor is the most important thing in life. It trumps everything else and it's the only thing that helps me deal with everything else.Collection: Things In Life
Venti is twenty. Large is large. In fact, tall is large and grande is Spanish for large. Venti is the only one that doesn't mean large. It's also the only one that's Italian. Congratulations, you're stupid in three languages.Collection: Congratulations
Oh, the weather outside is weather.Collection: Weather
Acting in general you just feel kind of stupid doing it anyway, but when you're pretending to be rolling around and dodging a foot or riding an ant, you're having to really do it seriously and there's nothing there. You've got to put faith in the process.Collection: Stupid
A lot of people say, "What's the worst part about being an actor?" And the worst part is that you're not a musician.Collection: People
Marriage is like a tense, unfunny version of Everybody Loves Raymond, only it doesn't last 22 minutes. It lasts forever.Collection: Forever
We all have different sides of our personalities, so I'd love to play some more different parts too.Collection: Play
I'm not a comedian. I didn't study sketch comedy; my background isn't that.Collection: Comedian
Sometimes you read a script and it's like, "You'll improv and this is just a blueprint of what the scene could be," and that's never a good sign. And it's never encouraging as an actor to take that on, really.Collection: Actors
I don't really think in terms of genre, I think in terms of story and character.Collection: Character
I was at a dinner party with a group of people, and we were talking about fake names. You know, how its difficult to come up with a really great fake name. Its a very specific type of gift. You don't want to go too far into the silly, and you don't want to go too far into the banal. I always thought one of the funniest names ever was Gern Blanston, which came from a Steve Martin routine on one of his early records.Collection: Funny
My sense of stand up comedy would be so esoteric.Collection: Would Be
I never thought of myself as a comedic actor. I didn't go to Second City, that's not my background, I'm not a comic, I studied theater and my career when I started was a lot of dramatic stuff.Collection: Cities
There are lots of things that you can go down the list and say, "Oh, these are cliches, we've seen this before, just hits every checkpoint." All of that takes a secondary status for me if I'm reading something and I just really like the characters.Collection: Reading
To me some of the funniest movies would be probably categorized in the dramatic genre, and likewise some of the most dramatic films, or films that have the most dramatic moments, are in comedies.Collection: Would Be