Paul Stevens (Bruce Willis), Elizabeth's highly strange father, who takes an instant dislike to his daughter's boyfriend Ross, stating the reason for this as being the age gap between her and him. He is seemingly impossible for Ross to please and brazenly crude, rude and abrasive towards him. He eventually threatens to have Ross fired from the university unless he ends his relationship with Elizabeth, as Elizabeth is a student at the university and Ross will be sacked if it emerges he is in a relationship with one of his students. After she joins him for dinner to talk up Ross's good side, he and Rachel start dating, making him somewhat of a hypocrite as he is considerably older than she is. They go away to Paul's country cabin in "The One Where Paul's the Man", where Ross and Elizabeth have also gone. While hiding under the bed, Ross hears Paul talking to himself in the mirror and singing "Love Machine";—after Paul catches Ross trying to leave the cabin and threatens to have him fired, Ross implies he overheard the mirror shenanigans and will inform Rachel of this if Paul lets the university know about the relationship or continues attempting to interfere with it. Paul agrees out of embarrassment and fear, but still shows a grudge towards Ross in "The One with the Ring". Rachel feels that Paul is too secretive for her liking and attempts to get him to open up emotionally but does too good a job when in the midst of conjuring up past memories of his troubled childhood with her he starts crying and will not stop. He even asks Chandler to hug him at one point after Rachel has left the room, and then lifts Joey off the floor while hugging him, too. Eventually pulling himself together, he apologizes to Rachel for overwhelming her with all his crying and they make up and have sex. But when he cannot keep himself together afterwards and starts bawling again, she breaks up with him.