Pauly Shore Is Back! And He's Finally Found the Peace He's Been Searching For
Koury Angelo
The Weasel—aka, Pauly Shore—is sick of being sad.
True, the '90s megastar has had a lot of things to mourn over the past 20 years. The loss of his superstardom, the loss of his beloved mother Mitzi Shore in 2018, and the loss of his father, comedian Sammy Shore in 2019. The loss of friends, old girlfriends, his sister in 2018. The loss of the carefree days of his youth when he had the keys to the MTV castle and carte blanche to do and say as he pleased.
But Shore, who is now starring in Guest House, his first film in over a decade, says he's simply ready to be happy again—and at 52, he's learned a lot about what it takes to get there. To start, he recently decided to leave Hollywood and Los Angeles for good. "I just had so much history there," he tells PEOPLE of why he left after 50 years.
He now lives in Las Vegas full time and is loving it. "I feel like myself again for the first time in many years,” he says. “I wanted to start over,” he says. “I want to be the guy America fell in love with years ago, the loose and crazy guy. I want to be happy Pauly again.”
For more about Pauly Shore, pick up this week's issue of PEOPLE, on stands now.
Getting back into acting is one of the ways he's starting to feel like "old Pauly" again. "I missed it," he says of getting in front of the camera again. In the raunchy comedy Guest House (also starring Mike Castle, Billy Zane and Aimee Teegarden) now playing On Demand, Shore plays a character similar to his onstage Weasel persona — a stoner-bro whose slacker vibe annoys the uptight people around him. He adored being around the crews again. "The wardrobe people, the caterers, the makeup team, the actors...I just love the camraderie on set."
He's also launched a new podcast, The Pauly Shore Podcast Show, and is much more reflective on how he dealt with losing his fame after a bright decade in the spotlight in his early 20s.
“Unfortunately, I took it very personally,” he says. “It was something I was used to—for 10 years my life was movies, touring, specials albums. And then it just wasn’t there anymore.”
These days, he realized he never should have cared that much.
“Instead of being hurt, I should have been patting myself on the back and going, ‘Wow you had an awesome run. Now let’s take some time off,’” he says of his early success.
He's also much more interested in looking toward the future than the past: "My journey made me realize, "You need to look at what you have...not what you don't have."
