Paul Giamatti

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Paul Giamatti

Giamatti at the post-2008 Emmy Awards.
Born Paul Edward Valentine Giamatti
June 6, 1967 (1967-06-06) (age 42)
New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.
Occupation Actor/Comedian
Years active 1990 – present
Spouse(s) Elizabeth Cohen (1997–present)

Paul Edward Valentine Giamatti (born June 6, 1967) is an American actor and comedian. He began his career as a supporting actor in several films produced during the 1990s including Private Parts, The Truman Show, Saving Private Ryan, The Negotiator, and Man on the Moon, before earning lead roles in several critically acclaimed projects in the 2000s including American Splendor, Sideways, Cinderella Man, and John Adams.

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[edit] Personal background

Giamatti was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut. His father, A. Bartlett Giamatti, was a Yale University professor who later became president of the university and commissioner of Major League Baseball.[1] His mother, Toni Smith, was a homemaker and English teacher who taught at Hopkins School and had also previously acted.[2] Giamatti's mother was Irish American;[3] his paternal grandfather, Valentine Giamatti, was an Italian American, of parentage from Telese, and his paternal grandmother was Mary Claybaugh Walton.[4]

Giamatti has a brother, Marcus, who is also an actor. Giamatti attended The Foote School, then the elite boarding school Choate Rosemary Hall. He attended Yale University, where he was active in the undergraduate theater scene and worked alongside actors Ron Livingston and Edward Norton, who were also Yale students. He graduated from Yale in 1989 with a bachelor's degree in English. He went on to earn a Master's degree in Fine Arts from the Yale School of Drama where he studied with Earle R. Gister. He performed in numerous theatrical productions (including Broadway) before appearing in some small television and film roles in the early 1990s. In Giamatti's junior year at Yale he was "tapped" to enter Yale's elite and clandestine Skull and Bones secret society.[5]

[edit] Career

Giamatti's first high profile role was in the film adaptation of Howard Stern's Private Parts as Kenny "Pig Vomit" Rushton, Stern's antagonistic program director at WNBC. Stern praised Giamatti's performance often on his radio program, calling for him to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. That did not happen, but Giamatti's career received a boost and when he was eventually nominated for an Academy Award he claimed he would have thanked Stern in his acceptance speech, had he won. He appeared in a number of supporting roles in big-budget movies such as The Truman Show, Saving Private Ryan, and The Negotiator (all 1998). In 1999, he played Bob Zmuda (and Tony Clifton) in the Andy Kaufman biopic, Man on the Moon. Giamatti continued to be featured in major studio releases such as Big Momma's House (2000) with Martin Lawrence, the Planet of the Apes remake (2001), and in Big Fat Liar (2002) opposite Frankie Muniz and Amanda Bynes.

In 2006, he was the lead in M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water, a supernatural thriller, followed by the animated film The Ant Bully, and Neil Burger's drama The Illusionist co-starring Edward Norton. He read the audiobook of the novel A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick, released in the summer of 2006.

He played Mr. Hertz in the action movie Shoot 'Em Up and Santa Claus in the comedy Fred Claus (which also stars Kevin Spacey and Vince Vaughn). Giamatti will play noted science fiction author Philip K. Dick in the semi-biopic The Owl in Daylight, which he is producing through his production company, Touchy Feely Productions.

He played a role in the 1996 video game Ripper, where he portrayed the character of Dr. Bud Cable. He is working on Pretty Bird which is a fictionalized retelling about the drama behind the invention of a rocketbelt.[6] He was reportedly going to play Elvis Presley's manager, Colonel Parker, in the now-defunct film Bubba Nosferatu.

Giamatti has commented on the fact that he often plays Jewish characters, but is almost never cast in Italian roles.[1]

Giamatti at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival

The Brooklyn Academy of Music asked Giamatti, its "2007 BAM Cinema Club Chair", to pick films for an eight-movie series called "Paul Giamatti Selects" and shown at the Academy in August and September 2007. His selections indicated a taste for paranoia and "the darkest of dark comedy", according to a writer for The New York Times. Giamatti chose: Frenzy, Dr. Strangelove, Brewster McCloud, The Big Clock, The Seventh Victim, Dawn of the Dead (1978 version), Seconds, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978 version).[7][8]

[edit] Awards

Giamatti's most acclaimed performances have been in lead roles in American Splendor (2003) and Sideways (2004). He was nominated for a Golden Globe and won an Independent Spirit Award for the latter. Giamatti received his first nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 2005 for his role in Cinderella Man. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe and won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture for the film. However, George Clooney won both the Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Syriana. (Upon winning the Golden Globe, Clooney commented in his acceptance speech that he had expected Giamatti to win the award that evening.)[citation needed] Giamatti has also been nominated for and won several critics' awards. He received his first Emmy Award for "Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie" in 2008 for his title performance in the HBO miniseries John Adams, a role that also led to a Screen Actors Guild award.

He has been nominated for 45 separate awards between 2001 and 2008, and has won 26 of them, including both an Emmy and a Golden Globe for John Adams. All of his nominations except one were for American Splendor, Sideways, Cinderella Man, or John Adams; the exception was a Blockbuster Entertainment Award nomination for Big Momma's House.[9]

[edit] Personal life

A resident of the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York,[10] Giamatti has been married to Nanae Wolf since 1990. They have a son, Andreas, who was born in 1995. His wife is Jewish and raises their child as such, while Giamatti himself has stated on several occasions that he is an atheist.

[edit] Filmography

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Gross, Terry (2004-02-13). "Actor Paul Giamatti". NPR. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1674650. Retrieved on 2007-05-31. 
  2. ^ Pringle, Gill (2007-11-27). "Paul Giamatti: Mr Potato face". The Independent. http://arts.independent.co.uk/film/features/article3199367.ece. Retrieved on 2007-11-27. 
  3. ^ Interview previously available at http://www.sundayherald.com/57083
  4. ^ Reston, James (1997). Collision at Home Plate: The Lives of Pete Rose and Bart Giamatti. Nebraska: U of Nebraska Press. pp. 15–16. ISBN 0803289642. http://books.google.ca/books?visbn=0803289642&id=znjlwbfZOTcC&pg=RA1-PA16&lpg=RA1-PA16&ots=_8zqp4MZuD&dq=%22Bartlett+Giamatti%22+ITALIAN&sig=iGZHVZTGXmCp8qRjBnZbD5GjzyE. 
  5. ^ Paul Giamatti - Biography
  6. ^ Paul Giamatti's Good Times
  7. ^ "The Week Ahead" feature, "Film" item by Mike Hale, "Arts & Leisure" section (Section 2), The New York Times, July 29, 2007, p 4
  8. ^ [1]Web page titled "Paul Giamatti Selects" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Web site, accessed July 28, 2007
  9. ^ According to the Internet Movie Database
  10. ^ "Film", The New York Times, July 29, 2007. Accessed November 29, 2007. "Beginning Wednesday it presents PAUL GIAMATTI SELECTS, an eight-movie series, stretching over six weeks, chosen by Mr. Giamatti, the actor's actor and Brooklyn Heights resident."
  11. ^ Ironclad at IMDBAccessed May 15th, 2009

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role

Ian McKellen (2001) · Christopher Walken (2002) · Tim Robbins (2003) · Morgan Freeman (2004) · Paul Giamatti (2005) · Eddie Murphy (2006) · Javier Bardem (2007) · Heath Ledger (2008)
v • d • e
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor - Miniseries or a Movie

Kenneth Branagh (2001) · Albert Finney (2002) · William H. Macy (2003) · Al Pacino (2004) · Geoffrey Rush (2005) · Andre Braugher (2006) · Robert Duvall (2007) · Paul Giamatti (2008)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Giamatti"
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