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Owen Wilson Gets Bullied

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Owen Wilson takes beaucoup pratfalls in Drillbit Taylor, playing a homeless guy recruited by a bunch of geeks to defend them from a high school bully. It’s the kind of no-holds barred teen comedy you’d expect from Judd Apatow and Owen seems to love every silly slapstick minute of it. His reputation has always been a little more laid back until recent tabloid headline-grabbing events in his life.

Ever had to confront a bully growing up?

“I went to military school and everybody gets picked on in military school. You're kind of getting screamed at and hazed. I also remember there was a kid in the neighborhood when I was growing up that we were all terrified of.  Even more embarrassing, there was a girl who used to pick on us, that we were scared of because when you're only like 9 or 10, you don't have a lot of strength. This girl was, like, huge and she liked to fight.”

I guess it would be fair to say that you didn’t have to spend a lot of time getting in shape or taking martial arts lessons to get ready for this role.

“Drillbit’s main technique is the 'live to fight another day,' which basically means just run and stay out of the way of physical confrontation. That's a very valuable technique that applies to a lot of things in life.  It's really all about choosing your battles wisely.”

This isn’t the first time you’ve been in a Judd Apatow film is it?

“No, Judd, bless his heart saw something in me, a little diamond in the rough, when I was first starting out.  He gave me a role in The Cable Guy. It's kind of ironic that we've now made a movie in which I'm protecting these geeks from the kinds of things that happened to me in The Cable Guy, like getting my head dunked in a toilet.”

The woman you fall for is played by Judd’s wife Leslie Mann. Was it a little awkward to get passionate with her?

“It seemed that Judd was always on set whenever Leslie and I had one of those hot embracing and kissing scenes, so all I could say was, 'You know, it's just a movie, Judd.’”

You’ve shared the set with some film legends. Was it ever intimidating?

“The first day that I worked with Robert DeNiro in Meet the Parents, I started a speech and it was just like gibberish because I turned and saw Jake Lamotta looking at me. And, so that was kind of hard. I got kind of nervous around Michael Douglas the same way because I was seeing Gordon Gekko. 

How would you describe your sense of humor?

“I’m Irish on both sides of my family and that’s like an Irish quality, using humor as a way to kind of deal with some of the stuff that life throws at you. So it’s not just pratfalls but more sort of coping with life by laughing at it.

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