Rudd - the reluctant pin-up

Sex has probably never been further from Paul Rudd's waking thoughts. The 31-year-old star is about to play the embittered alcoholic Jamie Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night - a character so drunk on family hate he almost chokes on it. It's one of the most unpleasant O'Neills an actor can hope to play.

Rudd staggers out of rehearsals late, a good half hour after a thundery looking Charles Dance went searching for a lunchtime fag. Rudd looks as if he's being fed through a mangle by director Robin Phillips, who continues to issue notes like the world's most worthy parking attendant. Welcome to the West End, Paul. "It's a part, and a play, that squeezes every possible emotional nuance out of you," admits this most reluctant of American hunks when we finally sit down in a concrete box somewhere in the depths of rehearsal-room hell.

Even the chilly cubicle fails to dull Rudd's magnetic looks. One can see why producers and high-profile directors such as Nicholas Hytner are beguiled by him. Hytner's crush on Rudd's artistic talents has carried the actor a long way. Rudd laughs at this. "We live around the corner from each other in New York," he says. "We hit a point working on Nick's film, The Object of My Affection, where we became good friends."

As the cute gay flatmate who drove Mrs Brad Pitt (Jennifer Aniston) to sexual distraction, Rudd managed the remarkable feat of looking far more attractive than she does.

He's never felt entirely at ease with the heat this, or subsequent roles, has generated. "I've never felt I'm hunkish or hunky," says Rudd. "I've never cultivated hunk roles."

Yet it's not entirely surprising that he is a pin-up for a growing army of gays as well as young girls. He is very much the thinking person's crumpet, with an odd assortment of films, and an even odder assortment of plays, including Neil LaBute's Bash, behind him.

For the alcoholic Tyrone, the cuteness has judiciously been allowed to run to seed. Rudd looks half-wild, like a gipsy. His head is covered in greasy ringlets. Chest hair sprouts out of the top of his shirt. The chiselled face hides behind a dishevelled beard. The emerald eyes are pale, almost milky.

With Dance and Jessica Lange playing his dreadful parents, and EastEnders heart-throb Paul Nicholls as his younger brother, Edmund, is it any wonder the producers (Bill Kenwright and Harold Sanditen) are rubbing their hands in glee? "It's the most gorgeous Tyrone family in the history of the planet," declared an ecstatic Sanditen in Variety.

He may be right, but the play is no cakewalk. For Rudd, Long Day's Journey must look like the north face of the Eiger. "I don't look at it as a way to gain theatrical credibility," he says. "Yet being in a play as big and as daunting as this for a long run is more fulfilling than being in a film. "I need the familiarity, the challenge, the routine. There's something very grounding about having to go to the same place every day and seeing the same people. I was in Alfred Uhry's The Last Night of Ballyhoo for a year. I like that 'going-to-the-office' aspect. "I also like the idea of doing a five-month stint in London. Both my parents happen to be from London. I've got family here. I've always liked the city, but I've never really lived here. "But that doesn't mean that I begrudge films," insists the Kansas-reared Rudd. "You are paid good money to fall in love with complete strangers."

Is it hard to do? "No. The hard part is explaining it to your partner," quips Rudd. "I just try to do roles I don't have regrets about."