E-mail a friendPaul Giamatti
airdate June 26, 2009
Since starring in American Splendor, Paul Giamatti has continued to rack up notable film credits, including the award-winning Sideways and an Oscar-nominated and SAG award-winning performance in Cinderella Man. He also won an Emmy for the title role in HBO's miniseries, John Adams. A Connecticut native, his acting roots are in theater, from his college days at Yale, where he earned his undergrad degree and an M.A. in fine arts, to regional productions to Broadway. Giamatti can next be seen in the feature, Cold Souls.
Oscar-nominated actor comments on being honest with himself about the kinds of roles he can play. (2:00)
Full interview. (12:47)
Paul Giamatti
Tavis: Pleased to welcome Paul Giamatti back to this program. The Oscar-nominated actor starred in a number of notable projects including, of course, Sideways, American Splendor and his Emmy-winning work in the HBO miniseries, John Adams. Great work, by the way, in John Adams.
Paul Giamatti: Thank you.
Tavis: Beginning in August, you can catch him in the new film, Cold Souls. Here now a scene from Cold Souls.
[Clip]
Tavis: (Laughter) What a line.
Giamatti: Yes.
Tavis: De-soul the body or disembody the soul.
Giamatti: Heavy stuff. Really heavy metaphysical stuff.
Tavis: (Laughter) Yeah. Tell me about this movie, Cold Souls.
Giamatti: It's a weird movie. I mean, it's a kind of dark comedy, science fiction, philosophical, but it's funny. You know, it's got a lot of comedy in it and it's an odd, great, quirky movie.
Tavis: Your character? Tell me about your character.
Giamatti: Well, I play, in theory, myself. I mean, I play a character with my name.
Tavis: Who is an actor.
Giamatti: Who is an actor. That's the thing. What I really am playing is a really neurotic kind of New York type sort of self-absorbed, overly precious, New York actor, which is not me. That's not me.
Tavis: Yeah (laughter). There's nobody like that in New York.
Giamatti: No, there's nobody like that, especially not the actors.
Tavis: No, not in New York. Not the actors, no.
Giamatti: Definitely not the actors.
Tavis: I'm trying to find the right word. You tell me. Freakish, funny, interesting - you tell me the word - playing a character with your name.
Giamatti: That's supposed to be you. I mean, in a lot of ways, I've played so many freakish, funny, weird characters and this was just another freakish, weird character that happened to be me. You know, it always felt like it was a character. I never really thought like, oh, I'm being me somehow. It's just a character that had my name.
Tavis: I'm gonna be honest with you. Because, to your point now, I've seen you play these funny, freakish characters over the years, when I heard - I was actually at a dinner party before this came out with the president of HBO who was talking about John Adams before it came out. So I'm asking, "Who's the lead?" "Paul Giamatti." I said, "Excuse me?"
Giamatti: (Laughter) Really took you aback.
Tavis: I'm like, "Giamatti? John Adams?"
Giamatti: Yeah.
Tavis I didn't get it and when I saw it, though -
Giametti: I hope it worked out for you, yeah.
Tavis: Oh, you killed that thing.
Giamatti: Well, you know, yeah, I think a lot of people reacted the way you did and I think it was a risk to probably put me in it.
Tavis: A risk to put you in it, but a risk for you to take it, one could argue.
Giamatti: That's probably true too.
Tavis: So why did you take it? What made you -
Giamatti: Well, I have great self-confidence, so at that time was -
Tavis: - (Laughter) We're back to those New Yorkers again now.
Giamatti: Yeah, we're back to that New York thing (laughter). Yeah, I mean, all I was really scared about when I took it was the size of it because it was so long. That what I was afraid was gonna be hard about it that it was gonna be physically taxing. I mean, I thought I could do it, but I took it because I'm never gonna do something like that again.
I mean, an eight and a half hour thing about the American Revolution and playing a guy like that, you know. And I thought nobody knows anything about this guy either. I didn't know anything about him and I thought it was a good way to tell the whole story of what kind of first fifty years the nation was.
Tavis: You a history buff at all?
Giamatti: Yeah, I'm definitely interested, but about that? American history never interested me that much. I found it for some reason boring (laughter), but I found this made me more interested. Yeah, I don't know why I always found it boring.
Tavis: Does being able - I mean, again, not that you ever thought you couldn't because, if you didn't, you couldn't, you wouldn't have taken the role. But does doing something like that open you up, make you hungry, thirsty for more stuff?
Giamatti: It definitely spoils you, you know what I mean? I mean, I was spoiled by that thing because it, yeah, I mean, everything else looked a little thin after that. You know what I mean (laughter)? But yeah, so it spoiled me a little bit and it certainly makes me want to do more historical stuff like that whenever I can. You know, but they don't a whole lot of stuff like that. Maybe they will now because of that.
Tavis: We've only met a few times and I always wanted to have you on the program. You strike me, even not on camera, as a funny guy, obviously a witty guy. When you choose to play these characters that you play that have these quirky personalities, why? Is there something about those kinds of characters?
Giamatti: Well, I don't know how much of it is me picking things that I identified something quirky in that I want to do or whether people are coming to me because they go, well, he can do a quirky thing. I mean, it gets kind of gray. Definitely a character has got to have something.
I mean, I'm not terribly interested in heroism, people being sort of simple and heroic, which was why Adams was so interesting because he really wasn't a terrible heroic personality. I mean, he did amazing things, but he was a deeply flawed guy.
So certainly flaws in people, in human beings, are very interesting to me. I don't know. Maybe it's something I bring to the part anyway. Maybe it's what they just want me to do. It gets gray.
Tavis: To your point now, do you see a lot of the same stuff coming across your desk? The same kind of stuff?
Giamatti: Similar kinds of things?
Tavis: Yeah.
Giamatti: Yeah, I feel like I've always - I mean, you know, I'm not gonna play the gun-toting lover guy in a movie. I'm just not because of what I look like. Within a certain area, I try to get as many different things as I can, but, yeah, I see similar kinds of guys that come my way all the time.
Tavis: What does it take - let me just ask you your own experience. I don't want you to speak for all of Hollywood.
Giamatti: (Laughter) That would be a terrible thing.
Tavis: Yeah (laughter). But it seems to me that one has to really be honest with himself or herself - and not everybody is - to say because of what I look like, I'm going to be playing in this circle. I thought I just heard you say that.
Giamatti: Yeah. I did say that (laughter).
Tavis: I thought I heard you say that.
Giamatti: I did say it. No, no. You heard correctly, sir. You were listening carefully.
Tavis: (Laughter)
Giamatti: No, I did say that.
Tavis: But that's a lot of honesty, though.
Giamatti: Well, it is. You know, somebody asked me once, they said to me, "You say something like that. How can you say that? Isn't an actor supposed to be vain?" I said, "My vanity is not being vain." You know, I'm vain about not being vain. I'm vain about being like, hey, man, I'm not one of these pretty boys who's got to look good all the time. You know what I mean? So I have a vanity about it.
But, yeah, I got to be honest with myself, you know. I mean, there's certain things I'm just not gonna do. Maybe I will, but I doubt it. If I wasn't honest with myself, I'd probably have a much harder time being an actor. I would have had a harder time.
Tavis: Now that I respect. That's why I wanted -
Giamatti: - I would have just had a much harder time being an actor. I think if I'd been sitting there going why the hell am I not playing Romeo, it would have been like, dude, wake up, man (laughter). But that's because I didn't want to play Romeo either. I wanted to play, you know, the other guy, the crazy guy in that play.
Tavis: Okay, here's the impossible crazy question and I have these thoughts all the time about if I could do this or if I could do that, what would I want to do? So assuming that you didn't look like Paul Giamatti looks -
Giamatti - (Laughter) Okay. Assuming I look like what?
Tavis: Whatever you -
Giamatti: - like you (laughter).
Tavis: No, no, no, not like me, not like me. Whatever you wanted to look like. What would you like to do or try to do that you know you can't do because of your style?
Giamatti: Interesting.
Tavis: See, I know, for example, if I weren't sitting here, if I just wish on any one night and the one time I got a chance to do it, I totally - he called me up on the wrong song. Prince is a good friend of mine - Hey, Prince, love this brother -
Giamatti: Okay.
Tavis: So Prince is doing a concert one night and it's actually very nice. He did a fundraising event for my foundation which works with kids - easy for me to say.
Giamatti: Sure.
Tavis: So Prince is on stage and he's killing it and he calls me up on stage to sing with him. Now all my life, I've just wanted to get on stage one time.
Giamatti: Do you consider yourself a singer?
Tavis: I can sing. I got a decent voice.
Giamatti: Okay.
Tavis: I was choir director in my church; I was in a singing group in high school and college, so I can carry a tune.
Giamatti: Okay.
Tavis: No Prince, but I can carry a tune. So he calls me on stage and some of these guys on my staff were here. So I get up on stage and he calls me up and he calls me up on a song that's not one of his. He's covering a song. I know the chorus; I don't know the words. So I finally get up on stage, he calls me up on the wrong song and I'm like -
Giamatti: - stumbling through, yeah.
Tavis: Exactly. I'm stumbling through it. I feel like a heel. Anyway, it was fun. But if I could one night just rock out a concert on stage, I would love it. It will never happen. But if you didn't look like this, what would you do?
Giamatti: Well, you know, I don't have any talent for this, so this is why I would want to do it. But to be able to do something physically like dance like Gene Kelly or something or even be able to do something like a Jackie Chan kind of thing. But something - not necessarily martial arts, but something where you're that graceful and where you're that physically uninhibited.
Tavis: I feel you.
Giamatti: I would love to be able to do that and I will never be able to do that. You can actually even sing, though, in the first place. I can't do anything.
Tavis: Just a wee bit, yeah.
Giamatti: All right. But that's what I'd like to do.
Tavis: All right. Now we know the things that we would never do (laughter).
Giamatti: (Laughter) Yep. Now we know we're in the right profession.
Tavis: Now we know to stay in our lane (laughter). We know what lane to stay in.
Giamatti: Exactly.
Tavis: Is it true - of course, it's true because I've seen it on screen, but I didn't realize this the last time we talked. I dug a little deeper. Your production company has the coolest name ever.
Giamatti: Touch Feely Films, yeah.
Tavis: (Laughter) How cool is that? Touchy Feely Films.
Giamatti: Yeah. I don't know why. I guess it was my idea and I thought, if we ever make a really violent action movie, it would be great if it said, "A Touchy Feely Film" and then the first thing you see is some guy getting shot.
Tavis: "Ak-ak-ak," yeah (laughter).
Giamatti: Yeah, something like that. I don't know what it was from. I can't remember, but that's what it is. We're doing okay. We produced this thing.
Tavis: So what's it like, then? How do you process wearing that hat when you're in it and you're producing it?
Giamatti: I show up a lot at the office and go, you know, "How's it going, guys? Everybody happy?" That's what I do (laughter). I stay away from doing a lot of the production stuff. My friend, a good buddy of mine, and my wife are really the people who did it, you know. I kind of did it thinking, oh, this'll be really great, but it was much harder than I thought, so I stuck to the acting with this one. I have yet to know what it'll be like to wear that hat because I'd like to do something that I'm not gonna act in and then I'll do the production thing.
Tavis: But even playing the role you play, though, with your wife and best friend running it, there still must be some sense of pride you take in being able to control this.
Giamatti: Yeah, definitely. It felt great. It felt great knowing that, you know, that you were taking something that felt very personal and felt very much generated by you and, yeah, it felt fantastic, it felt great.
It was nice to be - you know, I really wanted this woman, Sophie Barthes, who directed it to be able to make the movie she wanted to make. That was the thing I thought the best about was that we didn't get in this woman's way. We didn't tell her she had to do this and she had to do this and she had to do that. We sort of said you know what you want to do and just do it and were able to do it.
Tavis: You may never play Romeo. Let me just say, I saw Duplicity. You killed it and that pinstripe suit and that polka dot tie, you rocked it.
Giamatti: Yes, sir. Thanks a lot, man (laughter).
Tavis: You rocked it (laughter).
Giamatti: Thank you very much.
Tavis: You ain't rocking it today.
Giamatti: Not really (laughter).
Tavis: You're not rocking it today; you're not rocking it today.
Giamatti: I'm really sorry. I tried to be casual. I'm sorry.
Tavis: Yeah (laughter). But you're rocking in Duplicity.
Giamatti: Thanks, man.
Tavis: All right. Good to have you here, man.
Giamatti: Nice to be here.
Tavis: Good to see you.
Back to June 26, 2009