Is Paul Rudd circumcised? Hint: He's Jewish.
Also, while he tends to appear in comedies full of fart jokes and gross-out humor, being completely goofy and spontaneously silly without reservation, he's also a fine dramatic actor. Whenever I find myself saying that someone's performance was easy because "that's who they really are," I know that the truth is they are Not that person, and it was skill and talent and artistry that made it so easy to believe otherwise-- the kind of hard work that never gets noticed because when it's done right, it's invisible, and what took from hours to years to master then looks as easy as falling off a log.
So I try to resist giving in to my prejudice that he's wasted on "easy" comedy when he could do more Shakespeare (do enjoy looking at his skimpy Twelfth Night costume) and more "serious" roles like Nick Carraway in Gatsby. And more stagework. He played Donald in an out-of-town production of "Boys in the Band" when that show was a shocker of a Broadway hit, and of course he played a convincing gay man in "The Object of My Affection," which is a wonderful movie, so there is all sorts of evidence that he is fearless in his craft, and not afraid to show off his adorably furry body with an abundance of nudity-- pretty much everything but full frontal, but maybe that is the kind of bliss Heaven is for. In "This Is Forty," as the adverts showed, he spends time naked and trying to use a hand mirror as speculum to diagnose some worrying aspect of his anus, for example, apparently all that blocks the camera from seeing what he sees....
Fwiw, my own selections for his future work in legit theater include some major role in "The Changing Room" or-- an even better revival-- in "Take Me Out," a gay-themed play about professional baseball players that has as centerpiece extended group showering done the way you want to see athletes shower, if you get my drift, and I know you do.
It's not that he's completely sexy and utterly adorable, smart, talented, funny, and a great example of "straight but not narrow." He is all of that, but also seems like one helluva nice, ordinary, regular guy who is easy as to root for as drool over. Naturally, if some other threads can be a guide, a whole lot of people (if anyone notices at all) will respond with "Eww, icky fugly d-dbag talentless loser," and an equal number will agree
that they'd do him in a nanosecond, even in the middle of Times Square at noon-- not that even the bridge-and-tunnel crowd would be caught dead in that sterile wasteland these days, but you know what I mean.
Anyway, if you like his little dance on John Stewart's show, take a look at his dance solo in "I Could Never Be Your Woman":
Paul Rudd in a scene from "I Could Never Be Your Woman" - YouTube
