Paul Rudd Bloopers That Make Us Love Him Even More
Everyone likes Paul Rudd. He might be the perfect movie star — he leads a hit Marvel franchise, yet he seems down to earth, like someone a regular Joe could approach and strike up a conversation. Maybe he's just that likable and versatile of an actor. After his breakthrough role in the classic '90s teen comedy Clueless, Rudd proved he could do drama with The Cider House Rules and The Shape of Things, then reminded us that he'd always be one of the comedy cool kids with big supporting roles in funny classics like Wet Hot American Summer and Anchorman before segueing into superhero mode when he won the role of Ant-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The Ant-Man movies are among the funniest MCU entries, largely because Rudd likes to laugh and keep it light. Given all that, it's no surprise that he generates a lot of bloopers — and to offer hilarious proof, we've taken a deep dive into Paul Rudd's best outtakes to bring you some of the funniest moments from behind the scenes of his biggest movies.
Just some kid stuff
What makes little kids freak out — in a good way — more than anything else? Being present for stuff they think they're not supposed to see. For example, bad words. They've been told their entire lives that some words are very bad and must never be said, so it only stands to reason that when they actually hear one, they become enthusiastically amused. In this outtake from Ant-Man, Paul Rudd clutches Abby Ryder Fortson, the child actress playing his character's young daughter, and lets fly with a little bit of mild off-the-cuff profanity. Is this a case of a grown-up who usually peppers their conversations with off-color speech slipping up and doing it front of a little kid? Not exactly, as Rudd stares (and kind of smirks) right into the camera as he does so. He clearly intended to amuse and entertain his co-star with some naughty language, and that's exactly the reaction he got. "I heard you!" Fortson delightedly shouts over and over.
Why, robot?
Writer-director Judd Apatow likes to keep things loose and collaborative on the sets of his movies, encouraging improvisation and throwing out additional suggestions for funny lines as they come to him. Paul Rudd has an agile comic mind, so he's wound up in a few of Apatow's movies, including his directorial debut, The 40-Year-Old Virgin. His character, David, works alongside Steve Carell's title character at a big box electronics store, which gives the actors plenty of opportunity to play with (and off) goofy gadgets. In this not-quite-appropriate for the final cut sequence, Rudd interrupts a conversation to show off a cool robot toy...which does a little improv of its own by not working very well. A faux-forlorn Rudd leaves the room in mock embarrassment, but not before the robot leaves an airborne "gift" for its co-stars, firing off the sound of some flatulence rip on the way out.
60 percent of the time it works every time, except when it doesn't
In Anchorman, a movie full of memorable and hilarious sequences, one of the best occurs when ace 1970s San Diego reporter and self-proclaimed ladies' man Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) shows off to Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) his stash of intoxicating colognes. The prize of his collection: Sex Panther. "Sixty percent of the time," Fantana claims, "it works every time." Ron points out that this assertion doesn't make any sense, although in this Anchorman outtake, the elaborate, panther-shaped Sex Panther mechanical prop doesn't work at all. Rudd (and Ferrell) roll with it, improvising some lines. The gist: Rudd's Brian is extremely mad at the situation because, for one, that Sex Panther cost him $13,000. Ferrell's Ron suggests that Fantana try and take it back to the store for a refund, which is a no-go, because he "got it on the black market."
Knocking a few back to the future
Being a movie star is easy — play pretend, look pretty, cash checks, win the love and admiration of millions. But the actual work that goes into the job can be relatively difficult, including temporarily setting aside one's own personality while pretending to be a fictional character and delivering lines and conveying emotions in a believable and relatable way. Some parts of acting are harder than others, such as pretending to be intoxicated, improvising lines while staying in character, and doing either of those things while a co-star is angrily yelling into your ear. Rudd manages all three of those tasks in this unused scene from Knocked Up. While his character gets progressively more drunk in a restaurant, Rudd slurs and stumbles through some Back to the Future-themed goofing ("I'm gonna play an Eddie Van Halen riff on my guitar and freak everybody out and then say 'you guys are gonna love it in the future, trust me.'") all the while Leslie Mann, playing his wife, angrily pleads with him to stop talking.
This is suffering for one's art
That chemistry between Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann — even while playing a couple trying not to have a booze-addled fight in public — was such an outstanding element of Knocked Up that writer-director Judd Apatow spun the couple off into their own movie, This is 40, an often uncomfortable but painfully honest look at aging and long-term relationships.
Perhaps the most uncomfortable part of both aging and long-term relationships: getting a weird lump or growth in a hard to reach place and having enough trust and love in the relationship to ask your partner to check it out. Rudd has to do that in This Is 40, during a scene Apatow frames with the actor laying on a bed, legs held high and nether regions exposed to the open air (but blocked with a prop mirror). He asks his wife, played by Mann offscreen, to inspect something in his rear end. Understandably, Rudd can't get through this very awkward moment without laughing.
Cracking up is only natural
The 2012 comedy Wanderlust concerns a big-city couple — portrayed by Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston — so sick of urban annoyances that they decide to try life on a nature-positive, free-love, hippie-style commune. There are some growing pains, of course, particularly for Rudd's character. As is often the case with comedies, the director (David Wain) had his actors try out a bunch of different lines to see which one played the funniest. That's all well and good, but what if one — or both — of the performers in a scene can't get through any of those variants without laughing?
In this series of rapid-fire outtakes, Rudd's character tries to convince Aniston's that they need to give up the natural life, alternately because he's tired of finding very gross things in homemade wine, the terrible (but very specific) smell, and cohabiting with people who are "hairier than Alec Baldwin's forearms." (Rudd also quickly offers an apology to "Mr. Baldwin.")
Paul Rudd is just a po' boy, nobody loves his jokes
Making a sequel is a tricky business, and often a fool's errand. Writers, directors, and actors have to capture the essence — if not actual bits — that made the first movie so successful and repeat them in the second movie...but make them just different enough so fans get what they want without paying to watch a straight-up rehash.
All of the above helps explain how and why the "Brian Fantana's crazy colognes" scene from the first Anchorman movie was reborn as "Brian Fantana's crazy prophylactic collection" in Anchorman 2. Also recurring in the second news team adventure: wild and free improv from take to take — some of it derailed by helpless laughter. For example, while trying to come up with funny descriptions for all of his character's different male birth control devices off the top of his head, Rudd just keeps losing it — not because his own jokes are so funny, but because he finds them so hilariously lackluster. To each their own — if you ask us, it's objectively funny for a guy to refer to his "business" as "Aaron Neville."
Role-ing right along
In the 2008 comedy Role Models, Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott play a couple of guys forced into community service. All that stress highlights the differences between the two, resulting in a fight...which resulted in quite a few unusable outtakes. Rudd's character insults Scott's, accusing him of being the kind of guy whose "Sole purpose in life is to walk up and down Venice Boulevard." Knowing that "Venice Boulevard" isn't a thing (or at least not the right line), Rudd takes it from the top, gets the "Venice Beach" part correct this time, and accuses Scott of trying to "pick up girls with 'free Jäger shots' signs"...which Rudd rejects as a possibility for inclusion in the final film out of hand because he doesn't think it's funny enough.
After some more takes, some of them profanity-laced, it would seem that Rudd either runs out of ideas, his head goes blank, or he knows it's time to reset and start over because he utters a final, goofy, non-insulting insult to his co-star. He really goes for the jugular when he tells Scott that he "likes girls a whole bunch." That's the one that makes Scott crack up.
How do you know when to call "cut"?
Rudd doesn't just play funny superheroes like Ant-Man and hugely broad goofballs like Brian Fantana in Anchorman. He's a handsome guy and gives off an amiable vibe, so he also finds himself in a romantic comedy every now and then. In 2010, he starred opposite Reese Witherspoon in James L. Brooks' gentle and grown-up How Do You Know. Rudd plays a nice guy named George, who's caught up in a federal investigation into corporate wrongdoing at a company owned by his father but finds time to fall in love with Witherspoon's flailing ex-softball player.
His character is more than a bit nervous and uneasy, and judging by this blooper, those traits seeped into Rudd's psyche. He can't get through what's supposed to be a basic conversation in a restaurant with Witherspoon, fumbling over lines of dialogue, laughing, getting embarrassed, and trying to solve it all by awkwardly suggesting a kiss before blurting out "Nuts to you!" while his co-star giggles.
What a schmuck
Dinner for Schmucks is an odd comedy about odd people. A remake of the French film Le Diner de Cons, it stars Paul Rudd as a guy caught up with a strange club that requires guests to bring an oddball along to regular dinner parties; Rudd's candidate is a weirdo named Barry (Steve Carell). But it was while shooting a scene with Carell that something far weirder and funnier than anything that was supposed to be in the final cut of the film went down. An extremely loud beeping — like the sound of a large vehicle backing up — makes it impossible for Rudd and Carell to carry on. Carell, as is the comic actor's way, makes a joke of it, quipping, "Popcorn's ready!" Rudd takes it up a notch, taking blame for the beeping, claiming that he "was just microwaving some Hot Pockets." But then that infernal noise just doesn't stop, forcing Rudd to keep riffing. "You can just take 'em out, I'll eat 'em after this take," Rudd assures cast and crew.