Rainn Wilson

Rainn Wilson
Rainn Dietrich Wilsonis an American actor. He is best known for his Emmy Award-nominated role as egomaniac Dwight Schrute on the American version of the television comedy The Office. Wilson also voiced the alien villain Gallaxhar in Monsters vs. Aliensand starred in the police procedural Backstrom...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth20 January 1966
CitySeattle, WA
CountryUnited States of America
character play balls
I found it very easy to transform into creeps and weirdos and losers and goof-balls, and I'm happy to play eccentric kinds of characters, and I have a great affinity for the outsider, but I definitely am about expanding my range as well.
unique interesting awkward
What's interesting is the show allows for the awkward pauses to be captured, which makes it stylistically unique, especially for American audiences.
character tv-shows actors
The Baha'i celebrity, or the Belebrity, is a character actor with a big head playing an annoying creep on a TV show.
mom play actresses
My mom was an actress in the local Seattle theater doing experimental plays.
comedy grew grew-up
I grew up watching comedy. It was among all the geeky things that I did.
terrible sitcom knows
I've always been terrible on regular sitcoms with lots of jokes. I don't know how to tell jokes.
children wife lucky
I'm lucky to have a wife and a child that keep me grounded.
brother kids python
When I was a little kid I loved the Marx brothers and discovered Monty Python when I was 10 or 11-years-old. I used to take a tape recorder and hold it up in front of the TV to record entire episodes to play over and over again, so that I could memorise it.
real thinking play
I really like the stuff that is very absurd and very real at the same time. I think Anton Chekhov is the greatest comedy writer of all time. I think he would make a great addition to The Office staff. If you look through Chekhov plays there is a lot of awkward pauses in there. His mixture of pathos, absurdity, truthfulness and whimsy is just mixed together perfectly.
eye actors scene
A lot of actors are just like la la la - they're never really connected and then they're in the scene and then boom. They're looking you in the eyes and they're just really focused.
real keys listening
I'm a much better listener when I'm acting than I am as a person in real life because you learn as an actor that listening is so important. You have to really key into what the other person you're acting with is saying and how they're saying it and react in the moment to what is going on.
communication thinking self
I think that actors are terrible communicators as people by and large. I think our tendency is to kind of be self-centered and tune people out and just kind of get really me-focused, so I think communication for actors is a big challenge actually.
prayer play knees
I play Dwight. That is just much me being of service and worshiping as if I'm on my knees in some temple somewhere or bowing my head in prayer to God in some way. It's really all just the same thing.
character thinking people
I think that doing comedy and playing Dwight is a service. Not to get grandiose about it, but I have a talent for playing oddball characters and I can make people laugh and that can help bring families together and people will really enjoy it and it puts a smile on their face and I think that is a really great thing.