The Rom-Com Inspired By Paul Rudd's Real Life Romance With Julie Yaeger

The 2012 rom-com "This is 40" stars Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann as a struggling married couple. The film was written and directed by Mann's husband Judd Apatow. While being interviewed by the Jewish Journal about the movie, Rudd talked about how the film came to be (and an embarrassing scene involving a hemorrhoid).

"It's not gratuitous comedy," Rudd said. "Judd had said, 'Let's make a movie about marriage and the things that we fight about — kind of a real, warts and all view of it.' And sometimes you do need to ask your wife if there's something on your [backside]."

Rudd is married to Julie Yaeger, and the interviewer also mentioned that Rudd and Yaeger helped craft the details of "This is 40," mentioning that the couple recorded improvised scenes. When asked what in the film is a detail from Rudd's actual marriage, he said "This is 40"'s companion film, 2007's "Knocked Up," has more in common with his real relationship. He added, "When Judd was writing that movie, my wife once said, 'I'm so sick of looking at your back,' because I was just on the computer all day, checking my fantasy football scores." Rudd was also asked about how the movie affects his off-screen marriage, and Rudd quipped, "It's a little bit like couples therapy, except it's happening in front of millions of people."

At a "This is 40" press conference, Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd talked about the process of making the movie and about their characters. When Rudd was asked if his character's "frustration about life" was relatable, he said, "Oh, yeah! Obviously, the situations are different, but there are certain aspects of marriage, parenthood, and all that stuff, that seems relatable" (via Collider). He went on to mention that he, Julie Yaeger, Mann, and Judd Apatow had discussed those subjects over dinners. "We did that going back to 'Knocked Up,'" he added, "so there are aspects of the character that are very much a part of me."

However, it seems that Rudd's marriage with Yaeger is less dysfunctional than his fictional marriage with Mann's character in "This is 40." Yaeger was also supportive when Rudd became People's Sexiest Man Alive in 2021. "She was stupefied," the "Ant-Man" actor said of Yaeger's reaction. "But you know she was very sweet about it. After some giggling and shock, she said 'Oh, they got it right.' And that was very sweet. She was probably not telling the truth, but what's she going to say?"

Paul Rudd and Julie Yaeger got married in 2003 and have two children, Jack and Darby (via Us Weekly). Before any of that, their meet-cute happened at Yaeger's place of work. On "Friday Night In With the Morgans," Yaeger said they met back in the '90s, prior to the release of Rudd's film "Clueless." "I worked at a PR firm that he hired," Yaeger said. "And he got — he got more than PR." Rudd explained, "And I got to — I went to New York, and Julie was the first person I met." (via Marie Claire UK".

"We started talking and there was a maturity with her — she had experienced some tragedy in her life, I had too, and the impression I got was, wow, this is a woman," Rudd said. "This isn't a girl. I was really taken with who she was and how she had overcome and was in the process of overcoming adversities in her life. There was a perspective that she had and still has on the world that you don't come to easily — it's earned and most people don't have it at such a young age."