Paul Rudd’s Son Believed His ‘Ant-Man’ Star Father Only Worked at Movie Theater

Paul Rudd shared some adorable insight into celebrity parenting this week. The actor has two children with his wife July Yaeger – 16-year-old Jack and 12-year-old Darcy, and he did not exactly give them a briefing on their father’s unique job when they were growing up. In a new interview for the Today show, Rudd said that his son believed he worked at a movie theater for years, and Rudd didn’t correct him.

Rudd sat down with Willie Geist for an interview airing on Sunday, but a preview clip this week may have had the most precious moment of the whole discussion. Rudd said that he never tried to impress on his children that he was famous, joking about how awkward that would be. He said he’s “not going to sit my kids down when they’re 3 and say, ‘You know, hold on… I got some DVDs to show you.’ I really didn’t even explain what I did [for work].”

This led to some assumptions that Rudd never bothered to correct. He said: “I think that my son, when he was about 4 or 5, went to a movie theater to see a movie with his friends. There was a movie poster that I was on. It was in the lobby. So they all just thought that I worked at the movie theater, which I thought was very cute.”

Rudd let this delusion go on for as long as possible. He said: “I think when he was 15, he finally put it all together.” Even then, Rudd said he teasingly tried to keep the misinterpretation going. He said he “never corrected” Jack, and told him: “No, I work at the AMC Loews” in Santa Monica, California.

Rudd has always managed to keep his personal life relatively private, even as he himself has become an A-list star. His wife, Yaeger, was working at his publicist’s office when they first met, but she has since kicked off a successful career as a screenwriter and producer. When they’re not working in Hollywood, the couple spends a lot of time at their home in upstate New York. Rudd even co-owns a candy shop there, preserving a piece of small-town life.

Right now Rudd is a household name thanks to his ongoing role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Scott Lang, a.k.a. Ant-Man. His third movie headlining as the hero, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, premieres on Friday, Feb. 17 only in theaters. After a premiere event for industry insiders last week, the movie has been getting generally mixed reviews.