NEW YORK — Paul Rudd immediately warns me about bullet ants.

He beat me to the American Museum of Natural History’s entomology collection, where I find him leaning over a glass case of meticulously arranged specimens. These guys are scarier than they look, he says, gesturing to the rows of shiny black bullet ants. Apparently they rank high on entomologist Justin Schmidt’s pain index, which is based on his personal experiences of different species stinging him. Can you imagine going through all that? Rudd mimes being stung. “Ow!”

He imparts this knowledge as if he has been carrying it around for years. Maybe an above-average understanding of insect life is just a function of playing Ant-Man, the Marvel superhero whose suit allows him to shrink all the way down to subatomic size. Later that January evening, a stranger at the museum catches a glimpse of the 53-year-old actor and exclaims, “Don’t sting me!” Rudd smiles politely. He has become the ant.

The encounter doesn’t faze Rudd, who has spent nearly a decade in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, leading three of its stand-alone films — the latest, “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” out Friday.

He was already a star before, securing heartthrob status in 1995’s “Clueless” and displaying affable goofiness in some of the aughts’ biggest studio comedies, including “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” Playing Ant-Man thrust Rudd in front of a devout global audience. His list of credits now boasts the second-highest-grossing film of all time.

To Rudd, the Marvel projects are similar to any other: He stands in front of a camera trying to remember his lines and hit his mark, same as he would on the set of a Judd Apatow movie. Sure, he helped save the world a few times. He’s still Paul Rudd.

“I thought if I were ever going to be cast as a superhero, something like ‘Ant-Man’ would make sense,” he says. “This is not someone who’s really born with any kind of superhuman ability. He’s just a regular person.” [More at Source]

I’ve updated the gallery with photos of Paul attending the London premiere of “Ant-Man and The Wasp Quantumania”.

After reuniting with the May 2000 copy of Interview, in which he shared the cover with his pet goldfish, Paul Rudd, the ageless star of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and reigning Sexiest Man Alive, got on the phone with our executive editor to look back on that time in his life when anything seemed possible.

PAUL RUDD: Hello?

BEN BARNA: Hey, Paul. How’s it going?

RUDD: How’s it going? I’m using AirPods. Do I sound okay?

BARNA: Yeah, I can hear you. I’m okay too?

RUDD: Yeah. Sounds like you’re on speaker.

BARNA: I’m using Skullcandy earbuds, that’s probably why. So I heard that you were on set today for your photoshoot, and you got to hold a May 2000 copy of Interview in your hands for the first time in a long time, and that you had a bit of a reaction to it.

RUDD: Well, normally I don’t love reading interviews that I’ve given. I don’t like revisiting that kind of stuff. But that was funny to read. I was like, “Oh yeah, I remember that young guy who’s trying hard not to try too hard.”

BARNA: At one point, you ask Donal Logue, who interviewed you, “Do you think our humorous tone is going to come across in print, or are we just going to sound like a couple jack-offs talking about Shakespeare?”

RUDD: [Laughs] Yeah. [More at Source]

On a chilly Sunday in January, Paul Rudd found himself enduring what he called “the least enjoyable, most enjoyable experience you can ever have.” He was in Kansas City, Missouri, watching his favorite team, the Kansas City Chiefs, battle the Cincinnati Bengals with a spot in the Super Bowl on the line. It was bitterly cold in Arrowhead Stadium, with the temperature dropping into the teens. To keep warm, Rudd layered three hoodies (including one from Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce’s brand) under his number-10 Isiah Pacheco Chiefs jersey. “I felt like the kid in A Christmas Story,” he said. To ward off any confusion, he affixed a nametag to the front of his jersey. It read: Paul Rudd.

Rudd lives with his family in New York, but he spent his formative years in a suburb of Kansas City and remains a diehard fan of the team, sometimes to a degree that surprises him. “I’m a 53-year-old man watching these guys that could all be my sons playing the game and I’m so emotionally invested in it,” he marveled. “And when they lose, it’s irrational how sad it makes me.”

But the Chiefs won, taking irrational sadness out of the equation and replacing it with something a good deal more fun. One of the perks of Rudd’s rise—from small parts in indie films to supporting roles in blockbuster comedies to, for nearly a decade now, superhero—is that, when he has Chiefs tickets, he gets to go down on the field and interact with the players before and after the game. “As I’m down there, I’m like a teenager,” he told me of the experience. “I can’t believe it. I’m standing next to these giant guys and hugging players. And it’s the most surreal thing.”

He didn’t linger long in Kansas City, though: the next day, he was set to fly to Australia (with a brief stopover in Los Angeles) to begin promoting Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, his latest outing as the Marvel superhero. So Rudd spent the night at his mom’s house, where he stays when he’s home, and then made his way to the airport. (He left one of his hoodies with mom, since it didn’t fit in his Australia carry-on.)

When we met the next day, in the lobby bar of a Los Angeles hotel, he was a little hoarse, and nursed a mint tea. He wore a fuzzy gray sweater, Brooklyn-dad eyeglasses, and upstate-dad Blundstones. His hair resembled a field of question marks swaying on their points. All to say: he looked like a version of Paul Rudd who’d been out in sub-freezing temperatures for four hours the previous night. It was hard to tell if the shine in his eyes was leftover joy from the Chiefs’ victory or just a small outward manifestation of his Paul Ruddness—a faint trace of the sheepish warmth that has helped make him one of the planet’s most purely appealing movie stars, and increasingly one of its more bankable ones. [More at Source]

I’ve updated the gallery with photos of Paul attending the Los Angeles premiere of “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania”.