With his soft Texas drawl, trademark crooked nose, and dry comedic style, Owen Wilson has been charming the silver screen since his first Wes Anderson collab in 1996’s Bottle Rocket. Now one of Hollywood’s favorite funnymen, the actor recently joined the MCU with a starring role in the Disney+ series Loki.
In a rare interview with The Happy Reader, Wilson opened up about the books and stories that made him. Drawn to oddball characters, spiritual journeys and honest storytelling, find five of his all-time favorites below. Dive into the reading lists of other famous actors right here.
The Sportswriter by Richard Ford (also rec’d by Bruce Springsteen & Philip Seymour Hoffman)
“I like the part where he runs into this guy, Walter Luckett, at a bar. He talks about the other times he’s run into him. And he says, There’s one time when he sat down, and after we exchanged a few things, it went into this horrible silence of us just staring at each other – it went on for five minutes or so until he got up and left without saying a word.” -OW
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (also rec’d by Bob Odenkirk, Dick Cavett & Stephen King)
“I love the part where Huck and Jim get separated on the raft. There’s a storm and now the storm’s kind of over, and it’s still not quite dawn, and Huck gets back on the raft, and then decides that he’s going to play a joke on Jim as it gets light. Jim’s like, ‘My God, you’re here, you’re back!’ And Huck’s like, ‘What are you talking about?’ And he’s like, ‘We got separated,’ and Huck’s like, ‘I’ve been here the whole night – you must have had a dream.’ And he’s like, ‘How could I dream all of that?’ And he’s like, ‘Well you did because I’ve been here.’ And he’s like, ‘That’s the most powerful dream I’ve ever had, cause it was SO REAL!’ And when he finds out Huck tricked him, he says that great things to Huck that’s just very powerful. He says, ‘I’m going to tell you what it means – it means this whole time when we were separated I was just so sad… and all you were thinking about was playing a trick on Jim.'” -OW
Miracle in the Andes by Nando Parrado
“It’s a first-person account by Nando Parrado, the guy who was responsible for getting them out. He lost his mom and his sister on the plane, and what kept him going was thinking about his father waiting, having lost his mother and his daughter. There’s a spiritual element to the book that I appreciated. It’s very moving.” -OW
Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege by Antony Beevor (also rec’d by Richard Branson)
“Churchill has this quote about World War Two, that it was ‘won with American money, Russian blood, and British courage.’ In Stalingrad, you see a lot of that Russian blood.” -OW
The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen
“There are books that I read in a day, which is just great – a page-turner – and then there are some that I enjoy so much I don’t want them to end, and it seems like almost every page has something that’s really meaningful on it, that I want to think about, to savour.” -OW
(via Stack Magazines)