Owen Wilson

Start of a lifelong friendship: The making of Bottle Rocket

Wilson met Anderson at the University of Texas in 1989. Bonding over a shared love for movies, the two became fast friends and ended up sharing an apartment together. Anderson wanted to direct movies, and Wilson had a knack for writing. So they cowrote and shot a 13-minute film, which caught the attention of director-producer James L. Brooks. Brooks gave them $5 million and a crew to turn it into a feature-length film. In both the short and the feature, Anderson stayed behind the camera as director, and Wilson was front and center as one of the two leads—the other was his brother, Luke. Titled Bottle Rocket (1996), the film followed the comic escapades of three aimless friends who come up with a half-baked plan to enter a life of petty crime. Owen Wilson played the perpetually optimistic Dignan, who drags his friends along on his quixotic schemes. Although Anderson and Wilson had high hopes for the project, the film’s test screenings were so disastrous that Wilson briefly considered giving up acting to enlist in the military. Their debut film did not fill theaters or make much money, but it kindled enough interest among critics and film enthusiasts—especially after it was released on home video—to put both Anderson and Wilson on the Hollywood map.

Small roles, big impact: The Cable Guy and The Minus Man

Wilson and his brothers soon began receiving acting offers and moved to Hollywood along with Anderson. Wilson was cast as a minor character in The Cable Guy (1996), starring Jim Carrey and directed by Ben Stiller. The film, which went on to become a cult hit, marked the first of many collaborations between Wilson and Stiller, who became good friends. They were identified by the media as two of the earliest members of the “Frat Pack,” an informal nickname for a set of actors—including Jack Black, Will Ferrell, Luke Wilson, Steve Carell, Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, and Vince Vaughn—who frequently appeared in hit comedies with each other during the 1990s and early 2000s. (The group’s name is a reference to the Rat Pack of the 1960s and the Brat Pack of the 1980s.)

Over the next few years, Wilson was part of ensemble casts in films such as Anaconda (1997), Armageddon (1998), and The Haunting (1999). In the crime thriller The Minus Man (1999) he had his first sole leading role, playing a polite and soft-spoken serial killer. Wilson did not act in Anderson’s second directorial outing, Rushmore (1998), but he cowrote it with the director, and parts of the film were influenced by Wilson’s childhood and school life.

Becoming a comedy star: Shanghai Noon, Zoolander, and Wedding Crashers

In the early 2000s Wilson starred in several of his biggest commercial hits—many of them buddy comedies—establishing a reputation as a reliable comedic foil who could riff off other actors with ease and still leave a lasting impression on audiences. The first of these was the comedy western Shanghai Noon (2000), in which he played a chatty outlaw opposite a relatively taciturn Chinese imperial guard, played by Jackie Chan. Film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, “Wilson has been edging up on us. Most moviegoers don’t know who he is.…This movie will make him a star.” Wilson played Stiller’s rival in both Meet the Parents (2000) and Zoolander (2001), the latter an absurdist satire on the fashion industry that has since garnered a cult following.

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Wilson and Anderson reunited to write the script for The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) together. In the movie, Wilson played Eli Cash, a successful but insecure author of historical fiction. The film, featuring an ensemble cast that also included Gene Hackman, Bill Murray, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Stiller, was both a commercial and critical hit, earning Wilson and Anderson nominations for best original screenplay from the Academy Awards and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. However, Wilson has not written for the screen since. In 2001 Wilson also appeared alongside Hackman in the war film Behind Enemy Lines, which was a financial success.

Wilson continued to headline popular buddy comedies for most of the decade, including I Spy (2002) with Eddie Murphy, Starsky & Hutch (2004) opposite Stiller, and sequels to Shanghai Noon and Meet the Parents. The most prominent of these comedies, Wedding Crashers (2005), starred Wilson and Vaughn as divorce lawyers who attend weddings uninvited to meet women. It was a breakout commercial success, grossing more than $200 million domestically. Wilson was also cast as the voice of Lightning McQueen, the protagonist of the popular Disney animated movie Cars (2006) and reprised the role in later sequels and TV spin-offs.

He regularly figured in Anderson’s features during the decade. In The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004) Wilson played a well-meaning copilot looking for a connection with his supposed father, and in The Darjeeling Limited (2007) he portrayed a stubborn man who takes his two estranged brothers on a train journey across India in search of spiritual awakening. He also voiced a character for Anderson’s animated film Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009).

In August 2007 it was widely reported that Wilson had been hospitalized after a suicide attempt. He backed out of a role in Tropic Thunder (2008), directed by Stiller, soon after. After avoiding talking about the suicide attempt for more than a decade, in 2021 he acknowledged his long-standing struggles with depression and spoke about his brother Andrew’s support during his recovery.

He returned to filming in March 2008 with the family flick Marley & Me, starring opposite Jennifer Aniston as a co-parent to a mischievous dog.

Acclaim for Midnight in Paris and later works

Wilson kicked off the 2010s with a lead role in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (2011), in which he played a disillusioned screenwriter and aspiring novelist who, each night, is mysteriously transported to 1920s Paris and rubs shoulders with the era’s legendary writers and artists, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Salvador Dalí. When Wilson was cast, Allen rewrote the role to suit his persona, and Wilson delivered what many consider to be one of the standout performances of his career. “The boyishly bewildered, sheepishly vulnerable all-American charm of Owen Wilson has never been better used,” critic Philip French said in his review of the film for The Observer. Wilson’s performance earned him a Golden Globe nomination for best actor in a musical or comedy.

Even as Wilson kept audiences laughing in popcorn comedies such as Hall Pass and The Big Year (both 2011), he took on the gritty role of a troubled police informant in director Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice (2014). In the same year he also featured in the star-studded ensemble cast of Wes Anderson’s hugely successful The Grand Budapest Hotel. Wilson reunited with Anderson in 2021, playing a whimsical travel writer in The French Dispatch.

TV shows: Loki and Stick

After years on the big screen, Wilson took his first plunge into television when he signed up for Loki (2021–23), part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He brought charm and warmth to the character of Mobius, acting as the perfect foil for Tom Hiddleston’s portrayal of the mischievous Loki—much to the delight of fans, who cheered the duo’s sparkling on-screen dynamic.

Wilson then took the lead role in the show Stick (2025– ), playing a retired golf pro who takes a child prodigy under his wing. The show, on which he also serves as an executive producer, was renewed for a second season shortly after the end of its first.