Paul Rudd

Paul Rudd spent a decade being everyone's favorite second guy. He broke through as Josh in Clueless (1995), the former stepbrother who made khakis look like a personality, and spent years as the reliably warm presence in Judd Apatow films. Then Marvel cast him as Ant-Man in 2015, which should not have worked for the guy best known for explaining things to Steve Carell. He co-wrote the script, trained hard enough to resemble a superhero, and delivered a franchise whose charm rested almost entirely on his shoulders.

The real conversation around Paul Rudd isn't the MCU. It's that he has demonstrably not aged since 1995. When People named him Sexiest Man Alive in 2021, the internet responded with near-unanimous acceptance and a wave of vampire jokes. He said he'd lean into it hard and ordered business cards. Avengers: Endgame made him a genuine blockbuster fixture, but Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023) underperformed and pulled the franchise back from its peak. Nobody held it against him personally. His reputation is frictionless.

He was Student Body President at Shawnee Mission West High School in 1987, which explains something about his screen persona: perpetually enthusiastic, broadly liked, impossible to root against. His parents were British-born Jews descended from Ashkenazi immigrants, which made him the son of Londoners growing up in Kansas City. He co-founded The Big Slick, an annual charity event in Kansas City that raises money for Children's Mercy Hospital. He's said he credits the Midwest for the self-effacing quality he thinks keeps him from being insufferable.