Paul Rudd is looking back at one of his earliest film roles – and he’s not exactly proud of it.
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers
Paul Rudd spoke with Seth Meyers at the Tribeca Festival in New York on Thursday. The 57-year-old actor didn’t hesitate to roast his own performance in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers.
Rudd, who played Tommy Doyle, said, “It’s just … terrible. I’m awful. I have a real affection for it. But I was like, ‘Oh, my God. I suck. I suck. This just doesn’t work.’”
He joked that he approached the 1995 horror sequel with a level of seriousness that the movie absolutely did not require.
He said, “I was pretty much right out of acting school, and I read the script, and I was like, ‘I don’t know if I quite understand this. I know there’s something to do with rune stones and druid something or other? It was bizarre.’”
Trying to make sense of the mythology, he went into full research mode.
He said, “I was like, ‘Oh, I should probably watch all of the other Halloween films so I know where I’m at in the lineage,’ which, I didn’t need to do that, it turns out.”
Rudd even bought props to help him get into character.
He said, “I remember going to a store in LA at the time, I think it was called the Bodhi Tree, and buying a set of rune stones to really do the work and live in Tommy Doyle’s skin.”
“Actor’s Nightmare”
The Ant-Man star also recalled telling a producer that Halloween 6 would be released right after Clueless, his breakout hit. He knew all about it being an “actor’s nightmare.”
He recalled, “I remember telling the producer, ‘Yeah, the first movie I did, Halloween 6, is coming out right after Clueless,’ and I just remember he said, ‘Ah, yes. The actor’s nightmare.’”
Starting with a Lie
At the start of Rudd’s career in acting, he lied about playing Hamlet “in a production directed by Sir Ben Kingsley.”
During an appearance on a December 2025 episode of The Graham Norton Show, he revealed, “When I first got a manager, I had no credits to put on my CV, but I’d once done an afternoon masterclass with Sir Ben Kingsley when I was in school.”
“My manager put this down as, ‘Paul played Hamlet in a production directed by Sir Ben Kingsley.'”
“I lived in fear that he would one day see my CV!”