Paul Rudd recalls connecting with his late father after his dad shared an emotional lesson with him

Paul Rudd has a lot of good memories of his late father but that stands out for him is when his dad shared an emotional lesson with him. The actor said, "My dad and I would talk about this idea. If you are kind and nice to other people and treat them the way you would want to be treated, everything will be better," he said in an interview with PEOPLE. It is something that Rudd practices in his life to date especially after his dad, Michael died of cancer in 2008. "I had a good relationship with my dad, we always got on and talked. But we didn't have, like, the real heart-to-hearts. We didn't really have that," said the actor. "But I do remember one time where we really did have a great, interesting conversation, and I was asking him just about his thoughts on life."

Rudd shared that it was a "fairly hard" time. "We were having a kind of a tough time just as far as victims of the economy and everything else, and we started talking about religion and spirituality because we were not a really religious family," said Rudd. That's when Michael explained to him his idea of religion. "He goes, 'I do believe that you should treat people the way you'd want to be treated. And if I do that, if there's anything else [after this life], I hope that covers it for me, that all bases are kind of covered'," said Rudd. "You're only here for a short while anyway, so try and do something that adds to the pot, that makes life a little bit easier for somebody else, and you're contributing to the world while you're here and not just taking what you can from it."

According to the actor, it was "a major moment" that he had with his father. He said, "I believe that wholeheartedly, I probably believed it before that. But I think about it now, you know?" Rudd now sees his dad in himself when it comes to being a husband to his wife Julie and father to their two kids. "It's how similar I am in many ways to my dad," he said. "I identify myself as part of a collective more than I did because I feel like a husband and a father when I think about myself. And I feel like I've learned a lot. People say, 'Oh, you know, I still feel 20.' I don't feel 20 at all or in my 20s. I feel my age…in a good way."

If Rudd could talk to his father, he would like to know, "So what is thereafter? Does God exist? Is it super kickass after you die, and can you go anywhere you want? And can you go to the farthest reaches of space, and, like, look around the bottom of the ocean and be everywhere, and check in on all of us?'"

Rudd will be next seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania," which releases on February 17, 2023. He will be seen taking on Kang the Conqueror, one of the most powerful villains in the MCU. The actor admitted that training for the new movie was way more difficult than before, according to Men's Health.