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SOME PEOPLE ARE, to put it simply, balls of shining light. Those people exist here and there in our everyday lives, sure, but especially so when watching movies and TV shows. We’re talking about the people who show up, and whether in a lead or supporting role, are someone we don’t mind spending whatever time we can get with.
For nearly 30 years, Owen Wilson has been one of those people. Wilson is best known for his work in comedy (starting with his debut role in Wes Anderson‘s Bottle Rocket), but through the years he’s also shown an innate ability to handle anything from an action movie to a psychological drama just as well. He’s a versatile performer who can do just about anything a director or a viewer might want, and always make it happen with his signature laid-back, likable charm. Even when he’s playing someone who’s kind of a dick—like, say, in Zoolander or The Royal Tenenbaums—there’s something about the guy that we can’t help but come around to.
In his latest project, Apple TV+’s Stick, he comes around to a genre he’s dabbled in before—the sports story. As a co-writer of The Royal Tenenbaums (which prominently features tennis) and a star of James L. Brooks’s How Do You Know (where he played a baseball player), this isn’t uncharted territory. But while Stick hits most of the familiar sports movie beats, where it shines is in centering Wilson—once again, he’s just a guy we want to spend some time with.
And if you’re watching Stick (or anything else) and want to spend more time with Owen Wilson, the list below will have you covered with some of his best and most versatile appearances.
Bottle Rocket (1996)
Owen Wilson—along with his brother, Luke Wilson—first came to fame in Wes Anderson’s debut film, Bottle Rocket. While Anderson’s style would become much refined from here, Bottle Rocket is an indie comedy heist movie that perfectly puts on display exactly what both Wilsons are capable of. It’s fun, clever, funny, and extremely formative to Wilson’s persona as a screen presence.
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Zoolander (2001)
Without doubt one of Wilson’s greatest partnerships has come with Ben Stiller (a relationship that lasts to this very day), and their dynamic is never better on display than in Zoolander. The film follows Derek Zoolander (Stiller), an empty-headed male model who’s at the very top of his game—until a “so hot right now” newcomer named Hansel (Wilson) starts to steal his thunder. Add in a hilarious villain named Mugatu (Will Ferrell) and a funny Manchurian Candidate style subplot, and you have one of the signature comedies of the 2000s.
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The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
The Royal Tenenbaums tells the story of a narcissistic family patriarch named Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) who returns home with life-changing news for his family. Tenenbaums is, to this day, one of Wes Anderson’s best films—it’s arguably the point where his style most clearly and without question came into full focus—and clearly provided inspiration for shows like Arrested Development and Succession. Wilson plays the vital role of Eli Cash, who is a lifelong family friend of the Tenenbaum family who grows up into a Cormac McCarthy-esque writer of modern Western fiction. Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Owen’s brother Luke are among the many others in this impressive and delightful cast. This may be the best movie on this list overall.
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Meet the Parents (2000)
Look, we said Wilson and Stiller were one of the great comedy duos of the 2000s, and that wasn’t a lie. Meet the Parents focuses on Ben Stiller’s Greg Focker as he tries to win over Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro), the deadly serious and highly skeptical father of his new fiancée. But that’s not his only task—he’s also got to compete with Kevin (Wilson), who’s his fiancée’s charismatic and highly-successful ex-boyfriend. The two, as usual, work some magic together. There are two other films in this series (Meet the Fockers and Little Fockers) with a fourth on the way, but for the purposes of this list we’re going to have to stick with the OG.
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Shanghai Noon (2000)
When Rush Hour became a major hit in the late ’90s, replicating its success became a major priority. And so Shanghai Noon was born—and it’s different enough from Rush Hour to still hold up pretty decently. Jackie Chan stars as Chon Wang (pronounced like “John Wayne,’ ha ha) who is from the Chinese Imperial Guard and looking to save a princess—and is teamed up with a fun-loving cowboy named Roy O’Bannon (a perfectly cast Wilson, stepping into the Chris Tucker role). It’s fun! So fun, in fact, that a second movie, Shanghai Knights came out a couple years later.
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Wedding Crashers (2005)
We said Zoolander was one of the signature broad comedies of the 2000s, and it certainly is. But part of the glory of Owen Wilson is that he’s in more than one of the signature broad comedies of the 2000s, because Wedding Crashers is certainly that. Wilson and Vince Vaughn play a pair of attorneys who have an annual tradition: pretending to be people they aren’t in order to get into weddings they were not invited to, and just have a ton of fun. Wilson and Vaughn’s chemistry is for the ages, their love interests are played by Rachel McAdams and Isla Fisher, Christopher Walken is there, and you get a fantastic early Bradley Cooper performance as the film’s villain. Truly what more do you need? It’s a raunchy classic for a reason.
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The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004)
The Wes Anderson movies just keep coming. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is a movie about deep sea exploration, but at it’s core its a story about a father (Bill Murray) and his son (Wilson). Come for Anderson’s aesthetic and the movie’s fantastic David Bowie covers, and stick around for a really touching relationship at the core and well-crafted characters.
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Cars (2006)
Part of Wilson’s greatness is that he can do a little bit of everything—and that includes voicing the lead character in an iconic Pixar film. Cars is a film about, well, cars, but Wilson plays the one and only Lightning McQueen. Lightning is stand-in for the typical hot-shot athlete who knows little more than winning and his own catch phrases before he needs to get humbled and meets a world-weary mentor named Doc Hudson (voiced by Paul Newman). There are three Cars movies, but the first remains the best, and a classic for all ages, to this day.
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The Darjeeling Limited (2007)
Folks, we’ve reached the list’s fourth and final Wes Anderson movie, and it’s The Darjeeling Limited. The film features three brothers—played by Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and reigning Academy Award-winner Adrien Brody—as they take a trip through India with one another on the anniversary of their father’s death. It’s one of Anderson’s most touching and personal films.
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Marley & Me (2008)
When we say Wilson can do it all, we mean it—and that includes fun/sad dog movies. Wilson’s two most vital co-stars in Marley & Me are Jennifer Aniston and the adorable canine playing Marley. You know what you’re going to get with this one, but damn if it’s not effective!
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Behind Enemy Lines (2001)
You’ve got Wilson the comedy star. You’ve got Wilson the family movie star. You’ve got Wilson the animation voiceover star. And in Behind Enemy Lines, you get the chance to see Wilson as the action star, once again opposite the great Gene Hackman. Is this the greatest action movie ever made? No, it’s really not—it’s a pretty standard military thriller. But he can do it, and it’s fun to see these two actors go at it.
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Midnight in Paris (2011)
With Midnight in Paris, you can add a bit of romance and magical realism to the Owen Wilson portfolio. This film, which won Woody Allen an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, follows a writer (Wilson) who visits Paris with his fiancée (Rachel McAdams) and her family, where he becomes taken to long walks by himself. On these walks, he eventually finds a way to transport to the Jazz Age, where he meets figures like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and more. It’s a touching, sweet, funny movie about rediscovering what’s important to you and feeling alive—and Wilson proves to be one of Allen’s great protagonists.
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Inherent Vice (2014)
Wilson got to work with another fantastic modern director named Anderson in Inherent Vice, Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2014 adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel of the same name. And keeping with the source material, Inherent Vice is a trippy, psychedelic neo-noir, with another stacked cast. The film follows Doc (Joaquin Phoenix), a private detective who is looking for numerous missing people—one of whom is a dude named Coy Harlingen (Wilson).
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Loki (2021 – 2023)
OK. Not a movie. But we’re going to make an exception on Wilson’s list to include Loki, which got the actor into the Marvel world for the first time as time-travel authority Mobius M. Mobius. Wilson is a a natural fit in the role, because despite not looking much like himself—Mobius has short, light, almost gray hair, and a mustache—this role makes fantastic use of his feel-good go-with-the-flow vibe. Wilson fits perfectly with Tom Hiddleston (who plays Loki), and every scene with the two of them together is just a delight. “He’s the best. He’s actually the best,” Hiddleston told Men’s Health in a recent interview. “He’s one of the great men. I love that guy.”
We’re going to have to agree.
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