Paul Rudd hangs with youths. And sometimes gives them water bottles. Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

By PJ Grisar November 5, 2024

Actor Paul Rudd was spotted performing a mitzvah on Election Day: handing out water bottles to young voters in Philadelphia.

“I just wanted to give people water,” Rudd told MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff outside the polling place at Bright Hope Baptist Church, near Temple University. “They’re waiting in line for a long time and it’s a wonderful thing that all these young people are out voting.”

Rudd, who in 2020 handed out cookies to early voters in Brooklyn, said he wanted to tell these students “they’re doing really great things.”

Rudd, the former Sexiest Man Alive, has a history of menschkeit, serving as a bat mitzvah DJ. As for water, he famously did not take a drink on his episode of Hot Ones. With regard to his Jewishness, the star of Clueless, Anchorman, Ant-Man and many others, said, in the Between Two Ferns film, he doesn’t practice Judaism — because he “perfected it.” 

Perhaps accidentally Rudd’s latest act of charity recalls a major plot point in the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, where Larry David was put on trial for handing out water to an Atlanta voter in violation of a Georgia law. (No such law exists in Pennsylvania.)

When asked how he felt about the election, Rudd laughed “I feel good about handing out some waters.”

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