RHINEBECK, N.Y. — A portrait found in the attic of a well-appointed, upstate mansion owned by actor Paul Rudd hangs an eerie oil painting of the actor that also looks oddly ageless, jealous Hollywood sources confirmed.
“He guards it most ferociously,” said Enya Calhoun, Rudd’s housekeeper of the last two decades. “First it was only a heavy lock, but later he barred the doors and windows with iron bars, and he keeps the key forever on his person. I’ve offered to go in there to dust, but he always says he’ll do it. It kind of creeps me out.”
Rudd’s wife, Julie Yaeger, confirmed that dire suspicion led her to seize the key and uncover the room’s fell secrets.
“Behind the door, I found a dusty chamber. A heavy embossed leather screen was set before a frame, and that frame was covered in a gold-embroidered purple Venetian beach towel—which I’m pretty sure Paul got as a wrap gift when he was shooting ‘I Love You, Man,’” said Yaeger. “Anyways, I flung the heavy cloth aside and gasped as I looked in terror upon a pretty good painting of Paul. It was cute, and I was immediately confused about why he was keeping it in the attic. I thought it might be a gift for me, but he acted so weird when I told him I had looked at it. He’s owned the shirt he’s wearing in the painting since middle school.”
Rudd confirmed that the portrait was his greatest most shameful secret.
“So you think I am mad? Is this what you wanted? To look upon this face, to see the truth etched in these lines? It is in this portrait that my sins have been written, instead of my own face,” a frantic Rudd explained. “Whoops, that’s a mirror, actually. I meant to point to the painting. They’re super hard to tell apart. Wait. Which one is the mirror and which one is the painting?”
At press time, Rudd and his wife continued to argue about whether he’d had the painting done fifteen years ago, or last week.