Owen Wilson: Playboy Interview

Owen Wilson is an unlikely movie star, an unlikely screenwriter and an unlikely action hero. Renowned for his slow-pitch delivery, benignly demented improvs and smile that comes off as either knowing or out of it—or both—Wilson has generated a persona unusual for Hollywood. Surfers, stoners and hipsters all claim him as their own, and one critic even described him as the first "slacker hunk."
As close friend and frequent co-star Ben Stiller explains, "When I first saw Bottle Rocket it took me about five minutes to figure out where he was coming from, and after that I didn't stop laughing. There's a certain sense of self that he has, a confidence that's also completely self-deprecating. People try to categorize him, but he has created a whole new category."

Wilson has acted in some 25 movies, ranging in quality from the so-bad-it's-good Armageddon to the acclaimed Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, for which he and co-writer Wes Anderson received an Academy Award nomination. He starred opposite Jackie Chan in the blockbusters Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights and put a distinctive twist on male modeling in Zoolander. The one constant in these movies? Wilson's quirky demeanor, which inevitably generates laughs in unexpected ways.

Wilson is also unique for what Gene Hackman once discreetly called his "original looks." Unsurprisingly the press hasn't always been as circumspect, particularly when it comes to his nose. Time magazine called it a "twisting, swollen ski slope"; the Los Angeles Times called it "a bulbous, dented, twisted clump." In an interview Stiller once told a reporter, "I don't get questions about my nose, and I have a huge nose."

Wilson says growing up in Dallas in a family with an "Irish strain of depression" gave him his offbeat humor. His mother was a photographer, his father an ad executive. All three of their children went on to become actors. Andrew, the eldest, was in Rushmore and Charlie's Angels. The youngest, Luke, starred in Anchorman, Old School, Legally Blonde and Home Fries. The three brothers appeared together for the first time in Bottle Rocket and later in The Royal Tenenbaums.

While in college at the University of Texas at Austin, Wilson first met director Anderson, with whom he co-wrote The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore and Bottle Rocket, their low-budget debut, which has become a cult classic. Martin Scorsese includes it among his top 10 films of all time.

Wilson, 36, never planned on acting. He took the lead role in Bottle Rocket only because no one else was willing to do so. In a short time he morphed into a bankable actor, working with everyone from Bruce Willis to Eddie Murphy to Vince Vaughn, not to mention his brother Luke and, more often than not, Stiller. Wilson's latest movie, with Vaughn, is Wedding Crashers, in which the two play a couple of lugs who invite themselves to strangers' nuptials and hook up with the hottest guests.

To interview Wilson Playboy sent novelist and screenwriter Jerry Stahl, who first met the actor when he appeared in the adaptation of Stahl's book Permanent Midnight. Here's Stahl's report: "The bulk of our sessions took place on the back porch of Owen's immaculate Cape Cod-style home in Santa Monica. From the outside the place looks as if it could just as easily belong to a dentist. But step inside and you're surrounded by overflowing bookshelves and countless gallery-worthy photographs. And contrary to his less than eggheaded on-screen image, the real-life Owen Wilson is probably the most intellectual, flat-out hysterical slacker-stoner-surfer-hunk you're ever likely to meet. In fact, he has the uncanny ability to make any hour spent in his presence seem somehow like time spent cutting fifth period in 10th grade."