“People think I’m so nice, but I’m such a dick!” says Rudd’s character Pete in This is 40. Even when he’s playing unsavory characters, he has a way of making them sympathetic thanks in large part to the niceness of his facial expressions. He is often described as an audience stand-in, or as Hollywood’s go-to everyman for his seemingly friendly disposition.
This innate likeability is on its most prominent display in 2011’s Our Idiot Brother, in which Rudd plays the bighearted Ned. It’s a difficult role to pull off, and a quietly masterful performance put forward by Rudd, possibly the best I’ve seen from him. It calls for a type of character who is seemingly naïve but surprisingly aware of himself and his decisions to conduct himself in a positive way. It’s like the American Happy-Go-Lucky, in a way, and requires an actor that can exude unselfconsciousness mixed with a keen sense of self-awareness, all while behaving in a manner that you can’t help but smile at.
His more recent indie roles, which I’ll touch on later, similarly rely on our trust that the character Rudd is playing is an ok guy. Maybe not the best, most thoughtful guy, but one who means well. There’s a certain beauty in the simplicity with which Paul Rudd is able to give off this impression merely through facial performance.
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