Paul Rudd Revealed The Guilty Pleasures He Misses When He's Getting Into 'Ant-Man' Shape

"I get really locked in."

Senior Global Editor

Paul Rudd might seem like the man that never ages, but the Ant-Man star and former Sexiest Man Alive says things are definitely more “strict” in his life when he’s trying to get his body into Marvel shape.

"I get really locked into a really boring way of eating, and it gets very specific," Rudd told Narcity while promoting his newest Marvel adventure, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

"So it's nice, honestly, to be able to go out to dinner with my family and [...] have a slice of this pizza with everybody, or a beer, or candy for God's sake!"

He added that he has to introduce certain foods back into his life slowly after a Marvel movie so he doesn't just "run away with it."

"I could easily go totally hardcore the other way," he said.

Rudd is one of several stars who have gone through the so-called Marvel movie transformation, which has turned funnymen such as Chris Pratt and Kumail Nanjiani into shredded action figures for their roles.

Rudd doesn't do any shirtless scenes in the new movie, but he did recently share his Marvel-worthy fitness routine with Men's Health.

"I get up and I have a cup of coffee, and then I do cardio before I eat anything," he told the outlet, adding that he "never would've done that" before Ant-Man.

"I lift weights, hopefully at least three times a week. And I've learned so much about how my body reacts to foods, how it reacts to exercise and where I'm happiest and how much it affects me mentally."

For Rudd, the workouts help him feel more like a superhero and "less like an impostor" when he's in the suit.

"It sounds like hell," he told Men's Health. "It's really not. I find routine comforting."

Rudd has played Scott Lang/Ant-Man in several Marvel movies to date, and while he admits it's getting tougher to keep that Avenger body, he shows no signs of slowing down at age 53.

In fact, he takes things up a notch with Quantumania, which sees his loveable thief-turned-Avenger get sucked into a super-tiny dimension where he must take on Kang the Conqueror, a time-travelling baddie played by Jonathan Majors.

Lang and Kang wind up squaring off for a very low-tech battle in the movie, and Rudd admits it was one of the tougher things he's done in the role.

"It was cool because it seems so unlike an Ant-Man movie," he told Narcity. "With all of the action and everything we've already seen, this was coming down to just this fight, and a brutal one at that."

Rudd's Ant-Man is joined by his now-superpowered teenaged daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton), girlfriend Hope/the Wasp (Evangeline Lilly) and her parents, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer), on a trippy adventure that feels like a mashup of superheroes, Star Wars and Rick & Morty.

You can catch him in Marvel Studios' Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which opens in theatres everywhere on February 17.

Josh Elliott
Senior Global Editor
Josh Elliott is a Senior Editor for Narcity’s Global Desk focused on celebrity interviews and is based in Toronto, Ontario.