John C Reilly recalls awkward encounters with fans and fame

John C Reilly eyes me warily as I approach him at the deli in the San Fernando Valley where he’s suggested we meet for lunch. He’s standing near the door, dressed in a tan fedora with black suspenders holding up his slacks, looking like a man out of time. His shirt sleeves are rolled up in acknowledgement of the Southern Californian heat, and he appraises me with a cagey look that seems to ask: Is this the writer sent to interview me, or just some crazed fan wanting a selfie and to “shake and bake” with the guy from Talladega Nights?

A few moments later, after we slide into a booth and order matzo ball soup and pots of tea, Reilly confesses he’s become uneasy with his level of fame. When his career first took off in the mid-1990s, Reilly’s humanity and emotional authenticity made him one of America’s finest character actors, beloved by auteurs including Paul Thomas Anderson and Martin Scorsese. Then came a string of big-budget comedies: his aforementioned Will Ferrell Nascar romp in 2006 was followed in quick succession by sublime music spoof Walk Hard and Step Brothers, his reunion with Ferrell that cast the pair as rival step-siblings. It was those films that made Reilly a different kind of recognisable.

“That part of it I didn’t see coming, and I don’t especially like it,” he winces. “I’m much more shy and private than fame allows. I’m not one of those performers that has a hole deep inside that has to be filled by the audience’s anonymous affection.” That shyness marks our time together. On topics he’s keen to talk about, Reilly will happily hold court for 20 minutes uninterrupted. That verbosity, though, is a sort of defence mechanism, a means of keeping the conversation on safe ground; when we veer towards subjects he’s not interested in discussing, he has no qualms about letting a silence hang in the air.

Lately, Reilly has been wondering what it is that motivates him. In recent years, he’s enjoyed blockbuster success voicing the title character of Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph films, and critical acclaim leading an ensemble cast in the HBO basketball drama Winning Time. When the latter was cancelled in 2023, he allowed himself a moment to ponder what he wanted to do next. “I was trying to find meaning for my own life,” he says. “I’m 60 years old. I’ve done over 80 movies, a whole bunch of plays. I’ve made a lot of money and got pretty famous for a kid from the south side of Chicago. I asked myself: what gets you up in the morning now?”

The answer, it turned out, was show tunes. Back in 2002, Reilly starred in the film adaptation of the musical Chicago as Amos, the oft-overlooked husband of Renée Zellweger’s Roxie Hart.

The role gifted him the big musical number “Mister Cellophane”, which he pulled off with such aplomb that he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. “I had an amazing experience playing that role, and got all this attention for it,” he remembers. “Then it was over, and I just went on with my career.”

Reilly daydreamed about taking “Mister Cellophane” on tour, but the plan was hamstrung by an obvious flaw: the character only has one song. Instead, he sought out music in a similar style, old standards from the Great American Songbook and newer compositions by Tom Waits that could showcase the raw emotion of his singing voice.

“The first one was Irving Berlin’s ‘What’ll I Do’,” he says. “I spent 20 years collecting songs as good as that, but I realised they aren’t about not being seen, which is what ‘Mister Cellophane’ is about. They’re about being deeply in love, or regretting a love that you lost, or dreaming of a love to be. I realised this guy’s not Mister Cellophane. He’s Mister Romantic.”

So for the last couple of years, Reilly has been touring the United States as Mister Romantic, a vaudeville singer born anew each night on stage when he steps out from the steamer trunk where he lives. Reilly devised the character — who he is bringing to London and Dublin later this month — not just as a vehicle for the songs he wants to share, but also as a response to a world in need of a clown who wears his heart on his sleeve. “I was looking at what’s happening politically, what’s happening to our empathy and what’s happening to us as a result of phones,” he says. “This thing that was supposed to connect us is really dividing us. So out of joy and despair, I created this mythical character.”

When Mister Romantic emerges from his box, he exists under two rules: he has to put on a show, and he doesn’t have to go back in the box if he can successfully find someone who’ll love him forever. No two shows are ever the same, as the conceit allows Reilly to present an unpredictable mix of torch songs, old-fashioned showmanship and interactive crowd work. It also grants him distance from any audience preconceptions. He concedes that his previous musical venture, a straight-faced bluegrass band, had puzzled fans who turned up expecting to laugh at the bozo from Step Brothers.