Please Rewind Talent Wall

Owen Wilson

Owen Wilson has built a screen career around a deceptively relaxed style. His easygoing delivery can make a character seem as though he has wandered into the scene without a plan, but the timing underneath is precise. That combination has served him across broad comedy, action spectacles, animation and more eccentric character work. Born in Dallas on November 18, 1968, Wilson met Wes Anderson while attending the University of Texas at Austin. The pair co-wrote the short film Bottle Rocket, in which Wilson made his acting debut, before expanding it into a 1996 feature. Their collaboration continued with Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, the latter earning Wilson and Anderson an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Writing has remained an important part of Wilson’s career story, even as acting made him a familiar presence far beyond those early films. Several stages of that rise can be found among the movies covered by Please Rewind. Wilson had a supporting role as Leslie Mann’s date in Ben Stiller’s dark comedy The Cable Guy, followed by a part in the large-scale science-fiction disaster film Armageddon. He then appeared in Meet the Parents and joined Stiller and Will Ferrell in Zoolander, films that made particularly good use of his ability to play confidence, confusion and sincerity in the same register. Wedding Crashers placed Wilson opposite Vince Vaughn in one of the defining studio comedies of the mid-2000s. A year later, he found a different kind of leading role by voicing Lightning McQueen in Pixar’s Cars. The performance carried his familiar warmth and comic rhythm into animation, and he later returned to the character for Cars 2 and Cars 3. Wilson’s filmography also stretches into romantic comedy, thrillers, television and further collaborations with Anderson. Whether playing the laid-back counterweight in an ensemble or carrying a story himself, he tends to make polished movie comedy feel loose, spontaneous and conversational.