We Had an Extremely Honest Conversation With Paul Walter Hauser, Who’s in Everything Right Now

Paul Walter Hauser has been in a lot. And that’s just in 2025: right now, you can do a Hauser double-bill at the multiplex with The Fantastic Four: First Steps (wherein he plays the mischievous subterranean antihero Mole Man) and The Naked Gun (he co-stars as Liam Neeson’s police partner). In a few weeks, you’ll be able to catch him opposite Sydney Sweeney in Americana, a seriously anticipated neo-Western. And towards the end of the year, just as Oscar chatter begins to pick up, he’ll be in Deliver Me From Nowhere, the Bruce Springsteen biopic starring The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White as The Boss.

Hollywood has gone Full Walter Hauser in the last month, and frankly, it’s about time. The perennial scene-stealer—already beloved by the Letterboxd crowd for his roles in indie dramas like Richard Jewell, and cult comedy sickos for his incredible I Think You Should Leave sketch— has long deserved his flowers, and now his presence is nigh-on impossible to ignore.

He’s killer in all of those aforementioned 2025 movies and, as you’ll read below, Hauser makes for an equally killer conversation, largely because he prides himself on his absolute honesty—a surprisingly rare quality in the studio movie game, let’s be honest.

Throughout the course of our interview, his answers were both generous and unexpected, with frank takes on the realities of shooting studio movies (“On a big set, it’s like, you do not matter”), his reservations about being labelled a character actor (“It does put a chip on my shoulder”), and how he broke the intense shroud of secrecy around his Fantastic Four role (“I probably told 70 or 80 people”). He also spoke about how fatherhood has changed his perspective towards work, and his measured ambition as an actor—as he puts it, “I don’t need to be the steak, but I also don’t wanna be the garnish.”

GQ: It’s funny, because everyone talks about your co-star Pedro Pascal as being the guy who’s in everything — and here you are. How do you keep up?

Paul Walter Hauser: I think the difference is that he’s starring in everything, I’m just doing the John Goodman, John C. Reilly thing of popping in to help the team. I think Fantastic Four was five or six days of shooting total. Deliver Me From Nowhere mightve been 12 days total. Naked Gun was more like 18 to 22 days, probably. Americana might’ve been, like, 16 days. So when you add them all up, it’s like four movies that technically took up 50 days of my life, out of 365 in a year.

So that part is not that taxing, but you do have to stay in town, and wait it out, and kill time. Also, Naked Gun and Fantastic Four had me back for reshoots. That’s always a scary thing, where they’re adding some fun ideas, and you feel insecure because you’re like, “How do I capture what I did on the day if the day I shot it was 8 months ago, or a year ago?”

Especially when you’re trying to return to the headspace of a comic-book villain, or something like that, where it is so otherworldly and bizarre.

Yeah, and it’s not like you get to Shakespeare the thing. They’ve got like 400 people on set trying to make Fantastic Four. No one’s interested in you taking your time, trying to talk through a process. You’re one of 19 people who need to come in and do a third of a page today, [so you have to] keep it moving. It’s tricky, man—there’s a lot of pressure on bigger sets. I’ve always felt more pressure on something like Cruella or Fantastic Four than I would I, Tonya or Americana.

Where does that pressure come from?

On an indie set, they treat you like LA. In LA, it’s like, “Man, you matter so much. You’re an actor, you’re so important.” And then, on a big set like Cruella or Fantastic Four, it’s like, you do not matter.

You’re a cog in a machine.

Yeah. Big companies like a Disney, or a WWE, you are a cog in a machine. It does not need you, you need it, and you’re in service to it. Whereas some independent films you do, they wouldn’t have gone into production unless you did it. The whole day, they’re working on your monologue. They don’t have to do a car chase, so it’s a little easier.

Are there any upsides to working in the studio, big franchise mode?

The only upside would be visibility, in the hopes that a lot of people watch the movie. As far as money goes, it depends. It’s so weird. I’ve gotten paid next to nothing on some studio films, and then I’ve gotten paid really well on some indie films. It’s very all over the place.

You’ve done such a varied amount of work, but you’re still considered one of those great, go-to “character actors.” I’m curious about how you feel about that label, and whether it’s something you would apply to yourself.

I don’t take offense at it, but it does put a chip on my shoulder, to want to compete. I think most people want me to come in for 10 minutes and be the goofy guy, or the scary guy, in their movie, briefly. But I wanna be Jack O’Connell in Sinners. I wanna be Kyle Chandler in The Wolf of Wall Street. I wanna get up in the face of an A-lister and box with them, acting-wise. I wanna be in the mix. I don’t need to be the steak, but I also don’t wanna be the garnish.

Do you feel like you’re fighting up against that preconception of being a character actor, or the fourth-billing in the cast?

Constantly, yeah. And fourth-billing isn’t even that bad. Somewhere between four and one is awesome. I find that a lot of the offers that I get, that I say no to, are very kind of… Eh, this guy’s a weirdo. Day to day, I’m not a weirdo! I’m changing my kid’s diaper while watching a Pixar movie, while answering emails, while co-writing a script, while making dinner… I can do a lot of other stuff, but people have to be able to want to take a chance on that, I suppose. And I’ve had people take a chance on that.