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John C. Reilly talks about how being a middle child led to his acting career

VPM | By Rachel Martin

Published May 29, 2026 at 8:14 PM EDT

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

Each week, a guest draws a card from NPR’s Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. John C. Reilly has dabbled in music in his acting career, from roles in “Chicago” to “Walk Hard.” But recently, music is front and center for him with a vaudeville stage show called “Mister Romantic.” Riley spoke with Wild Card host Rachel Martin about his childhood and shared how he developed his love for musicals.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)

RACHEL MARTIN: What does your birth order say about you?

JOHN C REILLY: Ah, interesting. Well, I come from a family of six. So I’m the fifth of six…

MARTIN: Ah.

REILLY: …Which kind of makes me a middle kid. You know, the classic – a lot of actors are middle kids, actually, believe it or not. Like, I – yeah, it’s almost like a cliche among actors. You know, the older one gets too much correction. The youngest gets too much, you know – gets spoiled.

MARTIN: Freedom.

REILLY: And the middle one’s like, hey, what about me? Like, I’m here, too. And it kind of creates extroverts, I guess, or something.

MARTIN: And I read – I mean, you started doing musicals when you were really little. Like…

REILLY: Yeah.

MARTIN: …Musical theater, right?

REILLY: A lot.

MARTIN: Was that – do you remember the first time you raised your hand and were like, I think this is something I want to do?

REILLY: Yeah, I was 8 years old and started to go to the – there was this park near my house that had, like, programs for kids after school – woodworking…

MARTIN: Yeah.

REILLY: …And ballroom dance and drama. Or we used to call it dramma (ph) ’cause I’m from the South Side of Chicago, and that’s how we used to talk. But I’d be like, Mom, I’m going to dramma class. And I remember this first teacher I had named Jim Morley (ph). And he’s like, everyone lay down on the ground. Now, I want you to imagine you’re a piece of bacon in a pan, right? And the pan is cold right now. Now I’m going to turn up the heat. And what happens when the bacon starts? And everyone starts (vocalizing). And I’m looking around the room, like, oh, my God, I’ve found my people. This is it.

MARTIN: (Laughter)

REILLY: This – these are the people I understand, who want to pretend to be pieces of bacon.

MARTIN: Everyone’s convulsing like bacon. Yes.

REILLY: Yeah, yeah. Like – or just, like, complete flights of imagination. You know, like, that’s what I was into, as a kid. I was like…

MARTIN: Yeah.

REILLY: …Already that way, you know?

MARTIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

REILLY: Yeah, musicals taught me how to be an actor. That – ’cause you know, where I grew up, on the South Side of Chicago there, like, no one was doing Shakespeare or Ibsen or, you know, like…

MARTIN: Yeah, yeah.

REILLY: People weren’t – no one wanted to see, like, just straight dramatic plays. Everything had to have some music in it, you know?

MARTIN: Yeah.

REILLY: And so I went to acting school in Chicago. The Goodman School of Drama, it was called, then. It’s called the Theatre School at DePaul University now. And when I got there, I was like, OK, no more musicals. You’re a serious actor now, you know?

MARTIN: Right.

REILLY: I want to be like Robert De Niro and Al Pacino and Gene Hackman, you know? Those guys don’t do musicals, you know? Like – and then that movie “Chicago” came along, and I realized like, oh, my God, like, not only is this worth doing…

MARTIN: Yeah.

REILLY: …Not only do serious actors do this, but you have to be very talented to pull this off.

MARTIN: Right.

REILLY: To be someone that can do dramatic work and to do musicals, it takes a certain skill set that not everyone has, you know? And I realized, like, you know, the American musical theater is one of the few original art forms America has.

MARTIN: Yeah.

REILLY: And you shouldn’t be embarrassed about it. Like, this is a beautiful way to express yourself as an actor.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “MISTER CELLOPHANE”)

REILLY: (As Amos Hart, singing) Cellophane.

SUMMERS: You can watch the full conversation with John C. Reilly on YouTube or the NPR app by searching for NPR Wild Card. Riley’s album as Mister Romantic “What’s Not To Love?” is out now. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Rachel Martin

Rachel Martin is a founding host of NPR's award-winning morning news podcast Up First. Martin's interviews take listeners behind the headlines to understand the people at the center of those stories.

She spent six years as a host of Morning Edition, and was previously the host of Weekend Edition Sunday for four years, where she launched the "For the Record" series.

Martin also served as National Security Correspondent for NPR, where she covered both defense and intelligence issues. She traveled regularly to Iraq and Afghanistan with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his successor Leon Panetta, reporting on the U.S. wars and the effectiveness of the Pentagon's counterinsurgency strategy. Martin also reported extensively on the changing demographic of the U.S. military – from the debate over whether to allow women to fight in combat units, to the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell. Her reporting on how the military is changing also took her to a U.S. Air Force base in New Mexico for a rare look at how the military trains drone pilots.

Martin also worked as a NPR foreign correspondent based in Berlin from 2005-2006. During her time in Europe, she covered the London terrorist attacks, the election of Angela Merkel as Chancellor to Germany, the 2006 World Cup and issues surrounding immigration and shifting cultural identities in Europe.

Her foreign reporting experience extends beyond Europe. Martin has also worked extensively in Afghanistan. She began reporting from there as a freelancer during the summer of 2003, covering the reconstruction effort in the wake of the U.S. invasion. In fall 2004, Martin returned for several months to cover Afghanistan's first democratic presidential election. She has reported widely on human rights issues in Afghanistan, the fledgling political and governance system and the U.S.-NATO fight against the insurgency. She also reported from Iraq, where she covered U.S. military operations and the strategic alliance between Sunni sheiks and the U.S. military in Anbar province. She traveled to Saudi Arabi in 2015 to report on women's rights and in 2022 she reported from Ukraine's border with Belarus in the leadup to the Russian war.

Martin was part of the team that launched NPR's experimental morning news show, The Bryant Park Project, based in New York — a live two-hour daily multimedia program that she co-hosted with Alison Stewart and Mike Pesca.

In 2006-2007, Martin served as NPR's religion correspondent. Her piece on Islam in America was awarded "Best Radio Feature" by the Religion News Writers Association in 2007. As one of NPR's reporters assigned to cover the Virginia Tech massacre that same year, she was on the school's campus within hours of the shooting and on the ground in Blacksburg, Va., covering the investigation and emotional aftermath in the following days. In 2011, her story on racial discrimination in Hollywood won a Salute to Excellence Award from the National Association of Black Journalists and her series on the effects of the opioid epidemic on children won a Gracie award in 2019.

Martin started her career at public radio station KQED in San Francisco as a producer and reporter.

She holds an undergraduate degree in political science and an honorary doctorate from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash. Martin also holds a Master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University.

She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two sons.

See stories by Rachel Martin