A disarming smile and effortless charm helped actor Paul Rudd make his name on stage and screen, as well as cultivate an avid following as both a sensitive beefcake and comic foil.
Born April 6. 1069 in Passaic, NJ to British parents, he studied theater at the University of Kansas before attending Pasadena's American Academy of Dramatic Arts on a Spencer Tracy Scholarship. He also spent a semester at Oxford's British Drama Academy, where he appeared as "Hamlet" in scenes directed by Ben Kingsley. While in England, he also co-produced the Globe Theatre's production of Howard Brenton's "Bloody Poetry," in which he starred as Percy Shelley.
Returning to the USA in the early 1990s, he began his career billed as Paul Stephen Rudd in order to avoid confusion with stage and TV actor Paul Rudd (born 1940). He received great exposure with his first role as an aspiring filmmaker married to Reed Halsey (Ashley Judd, later Noelle Parker) on the NBC series "Sisters" (1991-96) -- a role he played from 1992 to 1995. He also began appearing in longforms, including the CBS miniseries "The Fire Next Time" (1993), the drama "Moment of Truth: Stalking Back" (NBC, 1993) and Joe Dante's "Runaway Daughters" segment of Showtime's "Rebel Highway" (1994). Displaying his comic skills, Rudd co-starred as a genial Chicago social worker opposite Tim Conlan as his raunchy photographer roommate in the short-lived twentysomethings sitcom, "Wild Oats" (Fox, 1994).
Rudd finally broke through in Amy Heckerling's hit comedy, "Clueless" (1995), playing Alicia Silverstone's college-aged, know-it-all stepbrother/would-be love interest. As the gravitas anchor amid the giggly schoolgirls, he ignited the fantasies of boy-next-door seekers everywhere. That year, he was also cast in the less impressive film, "Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers". (This was actually his first screen role, but the finished film debuted after "Clueless"). The following year, he played a jazzed-up Paris (renamed 'Dave Paris') in Baz Luhrmann's updated, rock 'n' roll version of "William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet," and a goofy aspiring filmmaker in the comedy "The Size of Watermelons" (shown at Cannes). He followed with a supporting role in the period drama "The Locusts", which reunited him with Ashley Judd, before playing a young man attempting to retrieve a Dear Jane letter in the middling comedy, "Overnight Delivery" -- both in 1997.
Rudd continued turning heads as a gay man involved with an unwed mother (Jennifer Aniston) in Nicholas Hytner's "The Object of My Affection" (1998). Despite the vanilla aspects of a contrived romance doomed by its players' inherently different instinctual drives, Rudd's intelligent portrayal elevated his nice guy role above what playwright-screenwriter Wendy Wasserstein had provided for him. Having made his Broadway debut in Alfred Uhry's "The Last Night of Ballyhoo" (1997), he initially balked at leaving its cast to make "Affection" but returned after shooting completed to resume his part as suitor to a dissenting member of a Jewish family trying to assimilate in Atlanta in the 1930s.
The following year saw him reteam with Hytner, this time on the Great White Way, as the lovesick Orsino, spouting the Bard's most poetic lines from "Twelfth Night" alongside Helen Hunt. After sporting long, pointed sideburns for his role as a recently jilted lover in "200 Cigarettes," Rudd returned to the stage opposite Calista Flockhart in "Bash," a trio of one-acts by Neil LaBute. In the evening's final segment, he and Flockhart portrayed Mormon college students visiting NYC, with Rudd playing off his boyish charm and delivering a chilling description of his character's participation in a brutal attack on two gay men. He went on to reprise the role in L.A. and London.
Moving back to the big screen, he co-starred as WWII pilot Wally Worthington in Lasse Hallstrom's "The Cider House Rules" (1999), the first of John Irving's novels adapted by the writer himself. Unfortunately, the streamlined film narrative reduced the part dramatically from its prose origins and left Rudd with little to do. There was no reducing his next roles, however. Rudd starred opposite Andie MacDowell in "Reaching Normal" (Showtime, 2000), written and directed by Anne Heche, and traded on his preppy looks to embody F Scott Fitzgerald narrator Nick Carraway in the 2001 A&E adaptation of "The Great Gatsby." A deft turn in the uneven but oft-hilarious comedy, "Wet Hot American Summer" (2001) set the stage for one of Rudd's more memorable (and visible) roles when he landed the plumb part of Mike Hannigan, Phoebe's straight-laced and level-headed beau, on the hit sitcom "Friends" from 2002-2004. Another key Rudd performance couldn't have been further from the "Friends" world: Neil La Bute's "The Shape of Things" (2003), another of the auteur's sharp-edged, harsh looks at the battles of the sexes in which Rudd played a young man who makes himself over radically after becoming involved with a mysterious beauty (Rachel Weisz).
Mixing things up a bit, Rudd took a role opposite Will Ferrell in the comedy, "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy" (2004), the most effective demonstration of his comedic skills to date. Rud played a misogynist expose reporter in 1970s-era San Diego who bolsters news anchor Burgandy's (Ferrell) attempts to freeze out their station's first female on-air reporter (Christina Applegate). Rudd's increasingly deft comic abilities caught the right attention, landing him in another major hit comedy "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" (2005). Written and directed by "Anchorman's producer Judd Apatow and starring Steve Carell, Rudd's co-supporting player in the earlier film, the actor played one of the supportive, if sometimes misguided, co-workers trying to help relieve Carell's character of his virginity.
Jumping from screen to stage in early 2006, Rudd appeared on Broadway with first timer, Julia Roberts, in her much publicized and sold out dramatic debut, "Three Days of Rain."
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