A-Line: Celebrity StylePaul Rudd’s Past Fashion Flubs
I adore Paul Rudd, and his interview with Chris Heath in the May issue of GQ makes me love him even more! The star of such films as "Role Models" and "I Love You, Man" talks about everything from his childhood in Kansas -- "I think there's something kind of good about growing up in a place you know is not the cool place to be" -- to working as a bar mitzvah and birthday DJ for a company called You Should Be Dancing. "[It was] kind of like 'The Wedding Singer,'" he laughs. "I had long hair and people had to wear tuxedos, but I was still trying to develop my own look, and I had shorts and Doc Martens and kind of wanted to go for the Red Hot Chili Peppers' 'Mother's Milk' kind of phase." Read this excerpt from GQ to find out more about the Oxford-trained actor's past fashion flubs, as well as his 4-year-old son Jack's unique sense of style.
"I really tried for a while to go with the Adam Ant look," shares Rudd, who tried to put an Ant-inspired braid in his hair and asked his mother to shave back his scalp in imitation of Adam Ant's receding hairline, which to the young Paul Rudd was purely a matter of fashion and not a desperate attempt to disguise biological reality as New Romantic flourish. (She refused.) He also asked her to bleach the top of his hair blond in emulation of briefly celebrated synth-pop wizard Howard Jones. (She refused.) And to aid in his creation of a Jones-esque rat tail in his hair. (She refused.)
"She wouldn't let me do anything," he says. "Smart.
Even Mother couldn't save Paul from every clothing calamity. "I had pants that had pleats in the ass," he recalls. "Pleated in front and then pleated in the back. They were already pegged at the bottom, but then I would try and have them taken in more. Until really it looked like I was wearing a huge pair of jodhpurs."
As he got older, his body started to work against him. "Puberty hit me pretty hard. All of a sudden I work up and I had really curly hair." He tried to blow-dry it straight, to no avail. "I wanted that Colt 45 feathered-on-the-sides look. But I looked like Bruno from 'Fame.' It was just a lost cause."
Pop music also guides the wardrobe of his 4-year-old son Jack. "He only wears coats and ties," notes Rudd. "He likes to wear suits, my son. And I think it was because of Elvis Costello. And bow ties, lately. Loves them. And also dress shoes, not tennis shoes. And glasses. He looks like George F. Will."
Click here to read GQ's full interview with Paul Rudd, or pick up a copy of the May issue on newsstands now.
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