Why would anyone be an actor if he or she weren't insecure? That's why anybody pursues this kind of work.
— Paul Rudd
My definitions of comedy, drama, and straight man are all blurry for me. I don't think of it in those terms.
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'm not actively seeking stardom. I just go to auditions, and I knock on wood.
I've been naked in a lot of my movies. There's something inherently funny about the naked male body, particularly mine.
I love attempting to play real people. I like to try and have dramatic moments as well as comedic moments, and my favorite thing is when those two lines are blurred.
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.
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.
There are many great writers out there and, actually, great scripts. The problem is - and this is what I've always felt, even when I got out of school and started reading scripts - the really smart, character-driven stuff tends to be smaller films, and they just don't get made.
'Divorce Court' is a great show.
Early on, I decided I would see if I could make a career work on my own terms.
Awkwardness is such a gold mine for comedy.
I was never much into knights and sorcery and that kind of thing. It's not because I was into anything cooler. I certainly wasn't. I played with LEGOs. I played with LEGOs way past when most people played with LEGOs.
My wife is very stealth-funny. She'll come out with something when I'm not expecting it, and it'll just kill me.
Anything traumatic in my life I've always dealt with through jokes and comedy.
My sister was born a couple years after I was, and I realized that I wasn't getting enough attention, as much attention as I used to before she showed up, and then I learned pretty early on that if I could do a silly dance or make grown-ups laugh, then the attention would come back to me, and I would be accepted.
Even more than getting married or having kids, I found losing a parent is what thrusts you into adulthood. For me it was. That was when the Earth tilted on its axis, and there was a paradigm shift, and I felt like a different person.
As a kid, I know that most of my parents' friends were because my mom made friends with them, and my dad went along. I know a lot of dads who do that. I think it just starts to happen with guys. In the case of my father, he was probably just too busy reading books about Titanic.
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.
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 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 grew up in the Midwest, where people seem to be friendly and nice to one another. There is less stress than in some of the other cities.
I don't find the characters I've played funny. The characters are actually taking their situations very seriously.
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.
People do still mention 'Clueless' to me. I'm proud and happy that I was in it.
I hated 'Top Gun.'
I used to live next door to a farm, so every day for awhile, I used to walk over and fed the cows, when I was in school. This was weird because I lived in sort of a subdivision, but this one holdout in our neighborhood in Kansas still had a farm.
I can talk about sports and stuff, but I have a season pass for 'Antiques Roadshow' on my TiVo.
My bar mitzvah, I went to my nan's, and she made kugel.
Amy Poehler, Amy Sedaris - they're both genius.
I think Ellen DeGeneres is just hysterical.
I'm a big fan of not working.
I don't feel like a dork, but I certainly have many moments of nerdism, and I embrace it wholeheartedly. I've always cottoned to that crowd more, anyway.
Comedy-wise, I think Chris Elliott is one of the funniest people.
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.
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.
I'm, uh, not proud to say it - I play fantasy baseball. It's, like, the dorkiest thing ever.
I grew up in a lot of different places, mostly in Kansas, I really started thinking seriously about acting in high school; I just did it better than most of the other activities in school.
My parents raised me to treat people the way you would want to be treated and to be polite. Sometimes, when I get nervous or insecure, I might overcompensate and might not be totally true to what I am feeling inside. But I get nervous and maybe too smiley and polite.
It's not often that you get to play somebody that has absolutely no cynicism or is not judgmental in any way.
'Ant-Man' was a genre, I guess, that I hadn't really tackled before.
It's nice to be in anything that anybody sees or likes. If it's something that has lasted, it's great.
Personally - and I don't mean to brag - my jokes have been falling flat for most of my life.
I'm surprised that I get to be in the same room with half the people that I'm working with.
I went through a phase where I thought it was really funny to make pratfalls in very crowded places. I jumped out of a moving car once, for a laugh. That was a mistake.
Kiss is a super - they are total businessmen. They pride themselves on it.
Growing up, if I had been given any advice - bad or good - I probably wouldn't have been able to act on it regardless. I wasn't shy, but I'd get nervous. I got a little more confident later in high school when I realized I could get girls to pay attention to me by making them laugh.
Embarrassment and awkward situations are not foreign things to me.
All I really wanted to be was a working actor.
There is a major part of who I am that does not feel like the alpha male.
