![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/6f367332a0f96687f1a426b36f99efce8d-paul-walter-hauser.rhorizontal.w1100.jpg\")
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\n Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Marvel Studios, Ursula Coyote\/Lionsgate, Paramount Pictures\/Everett Collection, Peter Sigmund\/Southern Honor Wrestling\n <\/p>\n
When Paul Walter Hauser was new to L.A., his then-manager gave him a warning. \u201cHe once said, \u2018You\u2019re very good at what you do, but just so you know, you\u2019re not Hollywood,\u2019\u201d the actor recalled recently. He didn\u2019t know exactly what this meant but guessed that it was said out of love \u2014 a fear that Hauser, a Michigan native, might have been too midwestern, too much a heart-on-his-sleeve guy, not to get hurt by a notoriously brutal industry.<\/p>\n
It hasn\u2019t happened yet. Hauser is now an Emmy and Golden Globe winner, and, if not quite a household name, he is at least a household face. Roger Ebert once coined<\/a> the \u201cStanton-Walsh Rule,\u201d which argued that \u201cno movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad.\u201d A modern successor might be called the Hauser Rule: A movie or TV show in which Paul Walter Hauser appears is usually worth checking out, if only to see what he gets up to.<\/p>\n After a steady rise playing a string of \u201cbasement-dwelling fuckups\u201d (his words), the 38-year-old character actor gets the opportunity to show off his range this summer. Hauser is not a physically transformative performer, but in three films released in the span of a month, he shifts seamlessly between moods and genres. In The Fantastic Four: First Steps<\/a> he\u2019s Mole Man, a comic-book villain he invests with a Daniel Plainview\u2013style musicality. In the new Naked Gun<\/a>, he\u2019s delightfully deadpan as Liam Neeson\u2019s sidekick. (\u201cI guess you really can\u2019t fight City Hall.\u201d \u201cNo, it\u2019s a building.\u201d) And in the neo-western Americana<\/a>, he\u2019s a lovelorn veteran who romances a stuttering waitress played by Sydney Sweeney. He\u2019ll also pop up as the Boss\u2019s guitar tech in October\u2019s\u00a0Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere. If anything links Hauser\u2019s characters, it\u2019s that many are broken men, often with an inflated sense of their own capabilities, who nevertheless forcefully assert their own perspective. He wonders if he is unconsciously revealing certain elements of himself: \u201cI feel like I have a chip on my shoulder quite often. I have what Christopher Plummer called<\/a> \u2018the Great Rage.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Hauser\u2019s reputation precedes him in the Williamsburg cigar lounge he\u2019s chosen for a Monday-morning interview. The last time he was here, he wound up buying pizza for the entire place. Once he arrives \u2014 dressed in a white tank top, track pants, and an Erewhon cap \u2014 he decompresses with a Padr\u00f3n, a Diet Coke (a \u201cfridge cigarette\u201d), and delivery sushi. \u201cI don\u2019t have any guilty pleasures, I only have pleasures,\u201d Hauser says. \u201cA lot of things have changed in my life. I\u2019ve kicked pornography, marijuana, alcohol, religious tribalism. However, to be able to sit and have a Diet Coke and a cigar once in a while and not feel constant guilt\u201d is a blessing. \u201cI remember what it feels like to be guilty about things worthy of being guilty about, whether it\u2019s objectifying women or day-drinking until you can barely walk. Nowadays if it\u2019s a doughnut or a cigar, I\u2019m just enjoying it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Hauser in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere. As Hauser makes the promotional rounds in support of these films, he has also become a new father. On the morning we meet, his youngest child, a daughter named Isla, is 8 days old. He has been trying to be more choosy with work, but with three kids to support that has become difficult. His growing family was one reason he recently relocated from California to Georgia, his wife Amy\u2019s home state. \u201cOur friends in L.A. are amazing, but they\u2019re all running businesses and shooting movies in Budapest,\u201d he says. \u201cWe need the casserole people, who show up at your doorstep with goulash when your kid is sick.\u201d<\/p>\n Hauser grew up in Saginaw, where his father was a Lutheran minister. He is the kind of Christian who prefers to call himself \u201cspiritual\u201d rather than \u201creligious\u201d and whose Instagram grid<\/a> is full of anti-Trump memes. He says parenthood has given him a new perspective on his relationship with the Lord. \u201cGod probably looks at us the way we look at our kids: \u2018You\u2019re impatient. You really don\u2019t trust me. Wow, you\u2019re a mess.\u2019 But also: \u2018Wow, you\u2019re adorable. I love you so much. I\u2019m so grateful that we have this relationship.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Growing up, his family was unusually supportive of his Hollywood dreams. \u201cI was very lucky that my folks were like, \u2018Please, go make some money. Everybody else here is slaving away at a nine-to-five.\u2019\u201d Hauser\u2019s big break came when he got a part as an extra in Dustin Lance Black\u2019s indie drama Virginia. After approaching the director, he was promoted to a speaking role. Emboldened, he moved to L.A. and found quick success, booking bit parts in Community and It\u2019s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. But he did not have any life skills. He smoked too much, drank too much, spent too much money on coffee-shop paninis. \u201cI was arrogant,\u201d he says. \u201cI had a spiritual nepotism where I was always like, \u2018God\u2019s going to take care of me.\u2019\u201d Having pissed away his savings, Hauser wound up sleeping on a buddy\u2019s floor, and, after about a year, had to move back to Michigan. He returned to L.A. two years later, once again sleeping on the floor but filled with a newfound dedication to his craft. He studied acting books, wrote screenplays. For money he took odd Craigslist jobs, worked the door at a comedy club, and manned the VIP room at a circus, where he fed Ben Affleck\u2019s family carrot cake so he could pester the A-lister with questions about directing The Town.<\/p>\n \u201cI was so confident about making it,\u201d he says. \u201cLooking back, it\u2019s almost like seeing somebody walking around on their phone missing getting hit by a bus. You feel as though you\u2019ve been spared so much pain, unbeknownst to you, while you were at your most vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n With his broad grin, easy laugh, and teddy-bear physique, Hauser resembles a Hollywood exec\u2019s vision of Middle America, and he eventually established a speciality in lunkheads: an incompetent thug in I, Tonya, a white Klansman in BlacKkKlansman, a man-child in Cobra Kai, a security guard who gets railroaded in Richard Jewell. For the most part, it\u2019s a type he\u2019s happy to play. \u201cI look back on the history of fuckups, from Randy Quaid to Danny McBride, Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids and Phil Hoffman in Along Came Polly,\u201d he says. \u201cThese are brilliant people who played idiots.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Hauser as Mole Man in The Fantastic Four: First Steps. Hauser\u2019s most acclaimed performance came in the 2022 Apple TV+ series Black Bird<\/a>, in which he played serial killer Larry Hall<\/a>, whose reputation as a harmless weirdo obscured a violent misogyny. It\u2019s a performance full of big swings, not least the voice, which Hauser pitches up to an unnerving falsetto. \u201cUnconsciously, in the second or third episode, my voice started to get higher and higher,\u201d he says. At first he worried he\u2019d screwed up the continuity. But with showrunner Dennis Lehane, he turned it into a creative move. As Hall began to test the waters with his jailhouse interlocutor (Taron Egerton) by getting ever more grotesque, his voice dropped down a register. The series earned Hauser an Emmy and a Golden Globe, and a barrage of more serial-killer offers. \u201cPeople are like, \u2018You want to play somebody who worships Satan and lives in a cave?\u2019 It\u2019s like, \u2018Not really.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Eventually, you need to take a break from playing losers and creeps. The world of Americana is filled with violent psychopaths, but Hauser\u2019s Lefty is the closest thing it has to Fargo\u2019s Marge Gunderson. He\u2019s the benign mirror image of Larry Hall \u2014 a childlike loner who nevertheless possesses a fundamental decency \u2014 a quality Hauser tried to bring out by going as small as possible. He drew on men he remembered from a small town called Hemlock where his father was a pastor. \u201cThere\u2019s a quiet brokenness but also a strong chivalry to them,\u201d he says. \u201cBravado can be fun to play, but you get pigeonholed. When you get the chance to do something else, you\u2019ve really got to try to own that. Prove to people that you could be a romantic lead.\u201d<\/p>\n Americana was shot back in 2022. Hauser jokes that his co-star Sweeney has gotten exponentially more famous since then \u2014 and more objectified. \u201cShe\u2019s not going to let anybody boss her around, make no mistake,\u201d he says. \u201cShe\u2019s not just putting up thirst-trap videos out of insecurity. That\u2019s a business decision.\u201d (The American Eagle kerfuffle<\/a> had not yet occurred.) How did his wife feel about him romancing Sydney Sweeney onscreen? \u201cShe\u2019s more worried about me bro-ing out with Sebastian Stan and Sam Rockwell. I very much fall in love with my male co-stars more than my female ones.\u201d<\/p>\n As Hauser\u2019s star was rising, his personal life was falling apart. In the depths of COVID, his drinking and drug use got out of control. \u201cI kept leveling up and burning through money,\u201d he says. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t enough to have Jameson. I had to have 25-year Glenlivet, $400 bottles of stuff.\u201d He split up with Amy and missed the birth of his first child before hitting rock bottom in a strip club on Bourbon Street. In the fall of 2021, he got sober. He and Amy eventually reconciled<\/a>. Now he is trying to get healthier so he can stick around for his wife and kids. \u201cI\u2019m enjoying not feeling like crap all the time.\u201d He\u2019s now on Zepbound, an Ozempic-style weight-loss drug. He is aware that his body in its current form has become his calling card, but he is putting his trust in his craft. \u201cI\u2019m not famous because I\u2019m a good actor who\u2019s big. It\u2019s because I\u2019m a good actor,\u201d he says. \u201cSo I have to carry that confidence into the future, and say even if I were to lose 70 pounds, I\u2019m still going to get cast.\u201d<\/p>\n However, professional obligations take precedence over the weight-loss plan. Last year, Hauser signed on to play his idol Chris Farley in a biopic. The project has a script and a director and is just waiting on an official green light from Warner Bros. \u201cIt\u2019s either going to happen next year or it won\u2019t,\u201d he says. \u201cI can\u2019t be 42 years old waiting to play Chris Farley in his 20s.\u201d Until then, the dream of totally transforming his body must wait over the horizon. Once he\u2019s finished shooting the Farley movie, he says, \u201cI can lose weight and have it off forever.\u201d<\/p>\n He is currently facing other holding patterns. Hauser has written or co-written over 20 screenplays, and now one of them, a James L. Brooks\u2013style dramedy about a cartoonist, is finally close to getting made. In a full-circle moment, he is developing it with Affleck and Matt Damon\u2019s production company, Artists Equity. Hauser will play one of the leads, but the green light is cast-contingent and his older co-star is proving difficult to find. \u201cYou get a pass from Steve Martin, you get a pass from Jim Carrey, you get a pass from Robert Downey Jr. \u2026 It\u2019s like, \u2018Shit, we\u2019re gonna run out of people at some point.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \n Hauser in the ring. There is another corner of the entertainment industry, less unionized and more violent, where things move more quickly. As if to prove how many different things he can do, Hauser for the past two years has been moonlighting as a professional wrestler. In a childhood dream come true, he\u2019s stepped into the squared circle for Ring of Honor, a notoriously brutal promotion, as well as smaller indies like Major League Wrestling, of which he is an executive producer. He also serves as a guest commentator and occasional onscreen presence for ROH\u2019s larger sibling, All Elite Wrestling. (In AEW lore, Hauser\u2019s Golden Globe has been stolen<\/a> and was once used as a weapon<\/a> in a match that had nothing to do with him.) For Hauser, wrestling fits somewhere between a hobby and a side gig. It\u2019s something to chase, a way to give back to an art form he loves. \u201cWrestle part time, make some money, entertain people, have fun,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s an adrenaline rush.\u201d Among wrestling fans, Hauser is admired for his ability to take big hits. A few weeks after our interview, he will square off with the wrestler Q.T. Marshall at a Ring of Honor match in South Philly. \u201cWe\u2019re going to beat the shit out of each other,\u201d he says, enthusiastically.<\/p>\n Wrestling, too, plays into Hauser\u2019s goal of changing his career through changing his body. When he thinks of the professional trajectory he\u2019d like to have, he thinks of his Naked Gun co-star Liam Neeson, a serious dramatic actor who transformed himself into an action hero and has now transformed again into a comedy star. Hauser would love to star in an action film and has an idea for an IP he could update. \u201cBut I can\u2019t even pitch it until I look the part,\u201d he says. \u201cNo one\u2019s going to take it seriously. It would have to be gimmicky, like a schoolteacher who learns how to use the bow and arrow.\u201d To do a straight action film would require a total physical transformation, something Hauser\u2019s Christian health-nut friends Chris Pratt and Mark Wahlberg have given him advice on. He thinks of John Cena, who moved away from the genre because of the toll the constant beatings were taking on his body. Could he fill the gap? \u201cI\u2019m in a place right now where I\u2019m like, \u2018Let\u2019s beat this body to hell. Let\u2019s use this body while we can.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n ![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/d82172271356b349d869a956d59e7425e0-paul-delivermefromnowhere.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: 20th Century Studios\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/67d37d17074f6b8ff6cfb48956ef2b0554-moleman.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Marvel Studios\n <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/d799671af3453701ae790595c052f6a25a-wrestling-paul.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Peter Sigmund\/Southern Honor Wrestling\n <\/p>\n