Paul Walter Hauser backed out of Rob Ford role to avoid playing 'every chubby idiot ne'erdowell from history' Wesley StenzelSeptember 1, 2025 at 12:30 AM Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for Disney; Vince Talotta/Toronto Star via Getty Paul Walter Hauser attends 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps' premie ...
- - Paul Walter Hauser backed out of Rob Ford role to avoid playing 'every chubby idiot ne'er-do-well from history'
Wesley StenzelSeptember 1, 2025 at 12:30 AM
Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for Disney; Vince Talotta/Toronto Star via Getty
Paul Walter Hauser attends 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps' premie on July 21, 2025; Rob Ford at Toronto City Hall on May 28, 2013Key points -
Paul Walter Hauser tells EW he declined the opportunity to play former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford to avoid typecasting.
The Richard Jewell star has also had discussions about portraying Teddy Roosevelt and wrestler Mick Foley.
The actor also reflects on The Fantastic Four: First Steps, The Naked Gun, and the challenges of Hollywood.
Paul Walter Hauser doesn't want to repeat himself too frequently.
The Americana star reveals to Entertainment Weekly that he declined the opportunity to play a notorious politician to avoid being typecast.
"I almost did a story about Rob Ford, the mayor from Toronto who smoked crack and stuff," Hauser tells EW. "And that was incredibly funny and interesting and I almost engaged with that. But I was afraid that it would feel like I'm just playing every chubby idiot ne'er-do-well from history, which I'm not really interested in doing."
Hauser has already portrayed a number of real-life figures who might match that ungenerous description. He portrayed Tonya Harding's bodyguard Shawn Eckardt in I, Tonya in 2017, and played the titular Centennial Olympic Park bombing suspect in 2019's Richard Jewell. He earned an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his turn as serial killer Larry Hall on the 2022 Apple TV+ miniseries Black Bird.
Due to his rumored use of crack cocaine, Ford was subject to international attention and frequent ridicule during his tenure as Toronto's mayor, which lasted from 2010 to 2014. Ford's drug scandal was eventually dramatized in the 2019 movie Run This Town with Damian Lewis playing the mayor three years after the Canadian politico's death in 2016.
Although Hauser didn't want to add Ford to his resume, he still has a couple of other real-life figures on his biopic wishlist. "I've had conversations about playing Mick Foley, the wrestler who portrayed Cactus Jack and Dude Love and Mankind," Hauser says. "And I've had discussions about playing Teddy Roosevelt."
WWE/WWE/Getty; Stock Montage/Stock Montage/Getty
Mick Foley; Theodore Roosevelt
The actor clarifies that one of those projects has a better chance of actually being made than the other. "Mick Foley is just conversations, but for Teddy Roosevelt, I have a really good script from someone and a couple producers are on, so really we just need a director and showrunner and we'd be off to the races."
Hauser can currently be seen in The Fantastic Four: First Steps as Mole Man and in The Naked Gun as Ed Hocken Jr., the son of the police captain played by George Kennedy in the original 1988 cop comedy. However, the actor isn't sure about the fate of either character or franchise.
"I'd be happy to play either one again," he says. "I had a lot of fun doing both. With Mole Man, I get to chew the scene a little bit more, whereas with Ed Hocken Jr., I'm more at the mercy of being the straight man to Liam. But I enjoyed both, and getting to work opposite Vanessa Kirby or Liam Neeson — I mean, those are pretty awesome dance partners."
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Paul Walter Hauser as Mole Man in 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps'
After playing recording engineer Mike Batlan in Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, Hauser will next star in Balls Up, an action comedy directed by Peter Farrelly (Dumb & Dumber) with Mark Wahlberg that's due to release next year.
"That movie's done, that's in the can ready to come out next year," the actor says. "Wahlberg just FaceTimed me and said, 'Hey, we don't have anybody in this role opposite me. I thought of you, would you wanna read this?' And I was like, 'Yeah, dude, of course.' And I read it, and it was crazy funny. I'm a big fan of Mark and Pete Farrelly, so that was a no-brainer for me. We shot for three months in Australia and had a blast."
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However, despite his enthusiasm for his recent projects, Hauser says that he's "exhausted" by the challenges of maintaining a Hollywood career.
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Paul Walter Hauser at the Los Angeles premiere of 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps' on July 21, 2025
"I don't think people understand how hard it is to break into Hollywood, and then to get to the level of acumen and reputation that I've tried to amass," the actor explains. "And then also keeping that at that level, and then trying to go beyond and try to star in films and not just be the seventh lead in five movies in a year."
He continues, "It's an exhausting amount of work with reading scripts, doing press, traveling, and with three kids now, I don't really have a social life. It's just work and duty to family, constantly. So I think Hollywood has exhausted me in the sense that it's an insane amount of work, and unless you're of the top, top, top percentage of people like, say, Adam Sandler or Timothée Chalamet, you're still fighting for everything you get. You are absolutely doggedly fighting for every little thing."
Americana, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, and The Naked Gun are now playing in theaters.
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