Struggle for Stardom
Paul Giamatti was born June 6, 1967 in New Haven, Connecticut. His father, A. Bartlett Giamatti, was the Yale President and Major League Baseball Commissioner. His mother, Toni Smith, was an English teacher as well as an actress.
While growing up, Giamatti attended The Foote School, followed by the elite boarding school Choate Rosemary Hall.
Giamatti attended college at Yale where he majored in English and earned his Masters of Fine Arts in the Yale School of Drama. While at Yale, he also joined the Skull and Bones secret society.
After graduation, Giamatti earned small film parts and television guest spots. His face was well-known but his name was not.
While also working on minor T.V. roles, Giamatti gained the lead roles in the Broadway productions The Three Sisters and The Iceman Cometh.
Giamatti’s film breakthrough was in 1997 in the role of media executive “Kenny,” (a.k.a. “Pig Vomit”) in Howard Stern’s Private Parts.
After earning this role, Giamatti began to play many more small roles in other movies. He was a mob henchman in Safe Men, a slave-peddling ape in Plant of the Apes, and a bellboy in My Best Friend’s Wedding.
As Giamatti became more known, he began landing more gigs. He starred in the HBO movies Winchell and If These Walls Could Talk 2.
From this Giamatti gained roles in both independent films, such as Storytelling and Confidence, and major studio blockbusters like Big Momma’s House and Big Fat Liar.
It wasn’t until Giamatti’s role of the real-life eccentric Bob Zmuda in the 1999 Man on the Moon that he really launched his career. After starring in this film, Giamatti landed the lead role of Harvey Pekar in American Splendor in 2003. He did not have roles in between these two movies.
American Splendor won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. And although many believed that Giamatti more than deserved an Academy Award for his role, his name was absent from the nomination list.
Also in 2003, Giamatti starred in the FX made-for-television movie The Pentagon Papers.
Giamatti wowed critics and audiences with his lead role in Sideways but was once again ignored by the Academy.
Next, Giamatti returned in 2005 with a role in Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man. The Academy finally nominated him for Best Supporting Actor but he lost to George Clooney.
During this time, Giamatti had already begun working on his next leading man project in M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water.
Following his work with Shyamalan, Giamatti began to perform voiceovers for animated movies. He was the voice of a bug exterminator in The Ant Bully and Tom the Gate Guard in Robots.
Some of Giamatti’s most recent works include The Hawk is Dying, Shoot ‘Em Up, and Fred Claus, all of which were released in 2007.
Filed under: American Splendor Reviews