Paul Rudd is often called ageless, but admits he’s on the back nine of life as he marvels at his success

Paul Rudd is excited to see his tiny character Ant-Man given the big-scale Marvel experience as he reflects on fame in his 50s.

Time is a major theme in Paul Rudd’s latest outing as the titular Marvel superhero in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

The pint-sized Scott Lang – aka Ant-Man – was last seen on screen in the record-breaking Avengers: Endgame hopping back and forth through history, and his third stand-alone film takes place in the microscopic, otherworldly Quantum Realm, where time behaves very differently.

On the surface, time has been very kind to Rudd. Much has been made of his eternally youthful appearance, to the point where he appears to be thoroughly sick of talking about it.

Indeed, sitting in a Sydney hotel room with the harbour glittering in the background, the star of comedies including Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, I Love You Man and This Is 40 is as approachable and hilarious as you’d expect him to be, but also thoughtful and reflective.

He admits that he sometimes feels every one of his 54 years – he says for this Ant-Man movie he had to “train a little harder for a little longer and it goes away a little quicker” – and having lost his father just as his career was hitting overdrive, and with two teenage kids growing up fast, he is feeling the passing of time more than he ever has before.

Paul Rudd as Scott Lang/Ant-Man in Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania. Picture: Marvel Studios

“Absolutely,” he says.

“I am acutely aware of it and it different ways. I think that time becomes very different after you have maybe had a loved one or a parent who has died, which I have now had. The world tilted on its axis when that happened and it has never righted itself, but life goes on and I have a different understanding and appreciation of what is important.

“And I also … really understand and do believe what it is that I value and I treasure most in life. And that kind of stuff comes with age and experience. I understand that a lot of the things that I had always imagined are kind of in the rear view mirror now … what am I going to do? Who am I going to marry? I wonder if I will have kids? All of these big questions that are always so exciting and no matter what’s going on in your life you can think forward to that – that’s been answered. And you feel like ‘all right, I guess I am on the back nine’.”

One thing Rudd had never imagined was the kind of global stardom that being a major player in the ever-expanding Marvel Cinematic Universe has afforded him.

Even before his breakout role in the 1995 romantic comedy, Clueless, the theatre-trained Rudd says he just wanted to be a working actor, and looked for projects that interested him, had some artistic integrity and were the kind of things he would want to see himself.

“What those things would be, I really didn’t try to predict and I had enough of an understanding, even at that age, that if my career was to succeed and I was going to be able to be a working actor in my 50s, which is where I am at now, that whatever route I took getting there would be completely unexpected,” he says.

“And it has been – I would never have predicted anything like this but I sure am glad that it happened.”

Paul Rudd on the red carpet in Sydney for the movie premiere. Picture: Brendon Thorne/Getty Images

Fittingly, the last time Rudd was in Australia was with his Anchorman colleagues Will Ferrell, Steve Carell and David Koechner for a star-studded premier of the 2013 sequel, The Legend Continues.

Rudd agrees that Ant-Man and his Anchorman character – the lecherous, moustached, cologne-abusing news reporter Brain Fantana – have been two of the most pivotal of his whole career, opening up opportunities that he didn’t even know existed.

“Absolutely,” he says. “Brian Fantana and the Anchorman experience, which by the way sounds like the worst band that you could possibly see at any venue … was the movie that I really got to know Judd Apatow on and then did a series of comedies after that with the same people. I have worked with that crew a few times, so it was really profound in my life that experience. The Marvel stuff has been coming up on almost 10 years … and it’s been life changing in many ways, and it’s certainly occupied a huge part of my life when I think about it.”

Ferrell’s Ron Burgundy has lived on in podcast form in the decade since the second film was released, but Fantana’s current whereabouts are unknown, although Rudd has his theories.

“Whatever the worst bar is in this town, that has the cheapest drinks and the cheapest people,” Rudd says with a laugh, “Brian is right there on the same stool talking about all the stuff he did 30 years ago.”

(From left) Paul Rudd, Will Ferrell, David Koechner and Steve Carell in Anchorman 2.

The first two Ant-Man movies, while critically and commercially successful, have existed a little apart from the main body of the MCU.

With a more family friendly tone and emphasis on humour and fun, the stakes haven’t been as high and the villains not quite so scary.

All of that will change with the release of Quantumania, which will be 31st movie entry in the phenomenally successful series and the first in Phase 5.

It will also introduce a new villain, Kang the Conqueror, who will be the main adversary for the next slate of films in the same way that Thanos was the shadowy figure who tied together the movies that culminated in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. As such, Quantumania will be both darker in tone and bigger in scale then its two predecessors and its events will have a profound effect on Marvel films to come.

“I think it’s more exciting than pressure,” says Rudd of stepping up from side-player to centre stage.

“I think, if I really thought about the pressure side of it, I might start to get too freaked out. But it was really cool to do a third Ant-Man movie and have it feel so big in scale and epic like this and retain all those qualities of the first two movies, but all of a sudden it’s in this huge Marvel movie that people are used to seeing in the MCU.”

Peyton Reed, who has directed all three of the Ant-Man films, has described his leading man as “the Jimmy Stewart or the Tom Hanks of the MCU” for his relatability and ease at switching between comedy and drama.

Paul Rudd as Scott Lang/Ant-Man, Kathryn Newton as Cassandra “Cassie” Lang, and Evangeline Lilly as Hope Van Dyne/Wasp in Marvel Studios' Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania. Picture: Marvel Studios

“He is so super-relatable and reacts to these crazy situations in the way that you or I might if we found ourselves in one of these Marvel movies,” Reed says.

“And, for me, that’s the great appeal of it. He’s not a genius scientist or a billionaire, you can relate to him, and he’s trying to find work-life balance. He’s trying to be a good dad but he also has these responsibilities as an Avenger – that always struck me as interesting.”

And although Lang begins the film on top of the world having written a best-selling memoir about his exploits defeating Thanos, Reed says he relished the chance to “beat Scott Lang up a bit more” at the hands of Jonathan Majors’ formidable foe, Kang.

“We wanted to start him in that state and the pull the rug out from under him and present him with the most serious and grave dilemma of his entire life,” he says. “Rudd is an incredible dramatic actor so we thought let’s put him in that central role and put him through the wringer in this movie.”

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is in cinemas February 16