Paul Giamatti biography

Synopsis

Early Years

Born in New Haven, Connecticut, on June 6, 1967, Paul Giamatti is the son of A. Bartlett "Bart" Giamatti, a former president of Yale University and commissioner of Major League Baseball (who perhaps became most famous for banning Pete Rose from baseball). His mother was a prep-school English teacher and former actor. Giamatti attended Choate Rosemary Hall, a prestigious prep school in Wallingford, Connecticut, before heading to Yale University to study English. He graduated in 1989 and soon after moved to Seattle. Not finding what he was looking for out west, Giamatti returned to Connecticut to attend the Yale University School of Drama.

As the 1990s rolled around, Giamatti moved from stage into movies and TV, making his feature debut in 1992 in the grunge-inspired film Singles. He was soon landing larger roles in such movies as Sabrina (1995) and Donnie Brasco (1997, the year in which Giamatti also was married; he and his wife had a son, Sam, in 2001), but his true breakout part was still to come. Giamatti really hit Hollywood hard with the role of (often enraged) media executive "Pig Vomit" in the Howard Stern biopic Private Parts. As Stern’s nemesis, Giamatti played one of the livelier roles in recent memory, and the viewing audience embraced him wholeheartedly.

Hitting His Stride

From this point, Giamatti's acting plate became very full, with supporting roles in such high-profile films as The Truman Show, Saving Private Ryan, The Negotiator—all released in 1998—and Man on the Moon (1999), in which he reunited with his Truman Show co-star Jim Carrey.

Starring roles in the HBO movies If These Walls Could Talk 2 and American Splendor soon followed. Giamatti was nominated for several awards for American Splendor, as he was for 2004’s Sideways, a film that proved to be a second breakthrough role for him. For Sideways, he earned a SAG nomination for Best Actor and won the Toronto Film Critics Association Award for Best Performance, along the way revealing himself to be a nuanced performer with a range that any actor would envy. Much to the surprise of fans of Sideways, Giamatti would have to wait until 2005 for his first Oscar nomination, which he received for the Russell Crowe feature Cinderella Man (for which Giamatti won nine other awards).

An Established Actor

With his career in full swing, Giamatti could choose any role he wanted, and his choices over the next few years were as diverse as his previous roles.