Paul Rudd says wife would have picked Keanu Reeves for Sexiest Man Alive

Rudd joked in an interview that he was not his wife's top choice. PHOTO: AFP

LOS ANGELES - Actor Paul Rudd, who was named People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive last week, has joked that his wife would have picked fellow actor Keanu Reeves instead.

Married to producer Julie Yaeger, 53, since 2003, Rudd, 52, joked in an interview with entertainment portal Extra that he was not her top choice.

"No, she would have voted for Keanu Reeves," he said on the red carpet for his latest movie, Ghostbusters: Afterlife. "Come on, he's Keanu, I'd vote for him."

Rudd and Reeves, 57, had worked together on the 2016 short film Anyone Can Quantum.

The John Wick and Matrix star, who has never been crowned Sexiest Man Alive, came close in 1994 but the magazine did not name a winner that year.

When Rudd, a father of two, was first named Sexiest Man Alive, he said: "I do have an awareness, enough to know that when people hear that I'd be picked for this, they would say, 'What?' This is not false humility. There are so many people that should get this before me."

Those who have worked with the Ant-Man (2015) star, however, agreed with the choice.

His The 40-Year-Old-Virgin co-star Seth Rogen tweeted: "No arguments here."

Meanwhile, actress Jennifer Aniston said: "We've always known this."

She shared a still of the two of them from the 1998 romantic comedy The Object Of My Affection on Instagram Stories and wrote: "You don't age, which is weird. But we still love you."

Previous Sexiest Man Alive Ryan Reynolds, who held the title in 2010, joked on the Today show last week that the honour "will be wasted on (Rudd) like so many before him".

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