20Q: Paul Giamatti

Q1

[Q] Playboy: Many moviegoers first noticed you in the role of Pig Vomit, Howard Stern's explosive program director, in Private Parts. Since then, especially after you won so much acclaim for American Splendor and Sideways, you've become even more famed for your great pissed-off screen persona. Do you spend much time being angry offscreen?

[A] Giamatti: Really, do I seem like a guy who's pissed off? I spend a large part of my life pissed off. Simple, mundane things drive me out of my mind--any sort of technology, for instance. My wife, who goes through life sending back food in restaurants, saying, "This isn't cooked right," claims I have some kind of weird electrical charge because the computer goes fucking haywire when I sit near it, like sparks suddenly fly out the back. I shout at politicians on TV, which probably makes me not much different from other people. Anything can piss me off. Maybe because of my appearance I've liked playing people who are, well, not unpleasant but misanthropic or pessimistic--people not trying to be happy all the time. I find it interesting to see people being a little unpleasant on-screen.

Q2

[Q] Playboy: You're pretty much becoming Hollywood's go-to star when a script calls for a normal-looking guy who can also believably get the girl. In Sideways your role as a failed writer and wine connoisseur could have been played by a guy with more traditional good looks.

[A] Giamatti: When I got that part I thought. Who's going to believe Virginia Madsen would fall for me? But it was great that my looks weren't used as a gag, gimmick or joke. Hey, I could probably lose some weight and get my teeth fixed, but I don't want to. I almost feel like it's part of my job now to look normal. Sideways harks back to a lot of 1970s movies, and in movie terms Jack Nicholson was odd-looking then.

Q3

[Q] Playboy: Whom would you switch bodies and faces with?

[A] Giamatti: I honest to God think it would be interesting to be Paris Hilton or Cameron Diaz, just to see what it's like to be one of those hottie glamour women. Or Jessica Simpson or Britney Spears. It sounds strange and warped, but I think it would be fascinating. What would it be like to walk down the street and be that person? The world must literally look different. I'd definitely sign up for that.

Q4

[Q] Playboy: What's your biggest concession to vanity?

[A] Giamatti: Keeping my nose hairs trimmed, although I think I'm sporting a few right now. I don't make many moves to assuage my vanity. There's certainly a lot I don't like about myself physically, but I don't do anything about it, and that's emphasized when I see myself on film. I find myself strange-looking. In real life I don't see that so much. There was the time I said, "Jeez, I have no chin. I think I'll grow a beard and make it look like I have a chin." I think I look better with facial hair, if that's a concession to vanity.

Q5

[Q] Playboy: Growing up, were you an irritable, misanthropic little kid?

[A] Giamatti: I wasn't out there on the pep squad, but I wasn't a strange, miserable, pulling-wings-off-flies type or somebody who threw small furry animals into barrels of acid. I had a bit of a morbid sensibility. I was a comic-book kid. I was a little twisted, very much into weird creature-feature films, like Hammer horror movies with Christopher Lee as Dracula or Fu Manchu. My dad was into the film noir kinds of things, but I always thought those weird, colorful guys on the side, like Peter Lorre and Elisha Cook Jr., were the best things in those movies. Wherever Walter Brennan was seemed more interesting to me than whatever else was going on.

Q6

[Q] Playboy: Your father, A. Bartlett Giamatti, was (continued on page 160)Paul Giamatti(continued from page 137) president of Yale University from 1978 to 1986 and commissioner of Major League Baseball from 1988 to 1989. Which of those gigs brought you the best perks?

[A] Giamatti: The coolest cachet came from baseball. People are still far more impressed with that. They say things like "Going to baseball games all the time must have been great." Baseball was hard to avoid in my house, so by default I was interested, but I'm not a huge baseball fan. Sadly, it didn't help at all with girls, but by the time my father was baseball commissioner I had a pretty serious girlfriend, so I was all set up. I didn't need any help.

Q7

[Q] Playboy: So you won the ladies in real life, too. How much did acting help you score?

[A] Giamatti: Growing up I didn't know where I was headed, except to the grave or maybe to the gutter. I went through wanting to do a lot of things, but acting wasn't one of them. I didn't really know what I was going to do until after my father died. Going into acting was as much a surprise to me as to anyone else, and I was even more surprised to find that I could make a living doing it. I never did it thinking, Oh yeah, now I'm going to score. But it became this nice surprise fringe benefit. All of a sudden I had some hot girls because of it.

Q8

[Q] Playboy: You're married, so how do you deal with women who hit on you?

[A] Giamatti: A movie set is largely about trolling for trim. I'm almost 38, but I've reached the point where the cute extra is much more interested in me and kind of sidles up to me now. I'm not putting myself down or anything, but it's mind-boggling that even a guy like me gets this from women. I'm like, "Why now? I've been married 12 goddamn years. I've put a lot of time into this, I've got a kid, and now you're coming up to me?" It's a horrible feeling to know I can't do anything, because now, suddenly, it's all around me. I hear guys say, "Hey, it's location banging," which means, what, you get a pass somehow and it's fine? I can't go there. It would be so easy, and there are definitely times when I've felt I'd better go back to the hotel room, quietly close the door and lock myself in.

Q9

[Q] Playboy: You've notched impressive Broadway and London stage credits doing O'Neill, Chekhov and Stoppard. How did that training prepare you for lowbrow movies such as Big Momma's House and Big Fat Liar?

[A] Giamatti: I did movies just for the cash flow. I didn't have a vision about what my career was going to be like. I thought, Well, that's fine. That's how I make my money. And that's how I continue to make my money, but the parts have gotten better. In those movies I felt that my appearance suggested to someone, "Hey, a guy who looks like he does must be just hilarious." The minute I try to make it funny, it's not funny. After the Stern movie I kept getting stuck in this thing where everybody wanted me to blow up all the time. I don't really feel comfortable doing that. I've done plenty of crud. I'm fine doing crud, but it's nice to be in some noncrud now.

Q10

[Q] Playboy: You did The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui onstage with Al Pacino. How crazy is he?

[A] Giamatti: I don't know if I'd use the word crazy, but he's eccentric, which surprised me. He's also a very nice guy and very neurotic. He handed me his sandwich right off his lap one day when I was hungry. That was a stand-up thing to do. He wears $3,000 Armani suits and looks like he sleeps in them. He's an obsessive, nutty actor--a rumpled, wacky guy.

Q11

[Q] Playboy: How crazy--or should we say "eccentric"--are you?

[A] Giamatti: I talk to myself constantly. Is that eccentric, or am I losing my mind? Or is it just sad? I'm obsessed with things. I have to have certain kinds of books around me. I'm always interested in books by H.P. Lovecraft. All that early, pulpy horror stuff is kind of interesting to me. I love to buy comic books, too. Pacino would go fucking crazy because I whistled all the time--standards and spirituals, mostly. I like my gospel music.

Q12

[Q] Playboy: What's one of the more memorable responses you've gotten from a fan?

[A] Giamatti: I was on Houston Street in New York City, and a bunch of gangbanger guys pulled up next to me in an SUV. One guy leaned out the window and went, "That's the nigger that played in Howard Stern! That's the nigger that played in Howard Stern!" which was the first time I'd ever been called "nigger." The number of movies I've done virtually guarantees that one of them is on cable at any time. It's nonstop Giamatti, which means those glittering performances in such fine pictures as Big Momma's House will be marching across your TV screen relentlessly.

Q13

[Q] Playboy: Playing comic-book artist and curmudgeon Harvey Pekar in American Splendor must have brought you other fan attention, particularly from "special" people who claim you as one of their own.

[A] Giamatti: A lot of Harvey-like people saw that movie, and I've definitely gotten recognition from them. When I visited my sick mom in the hospital, lots of weird hospital technicians who had seen that movie came up to me. A Harvey-like mailman stopped me on the street the other day. I was shying away from him, and he was kind of scary, a little weird, disheveled and aggressive, saying, "Hey, I really like your stuff, man." Then he said American Splendor was great, and I thought, Perfect.

Q14

[Q] Playboy: Would you reveal what substances, illegal or not, you all had to be on while making Planet of the Apes?

[A] Giamatti: We should have been taking drugs. Unfortunately we weren't on anything. It was fantastic when my agent called and said, "Tim Burton wants to meet you for Planet of the Apes." The script that actually came across my desk meandered. Bad script. If you're going to remake that movie, let alone a good science-fiction film, plot would seem to be of the essence. Not that the first movie is Jonathan Swift, but it has a good satirical point of view. This one? Nothing. It just dribbled away. But it turned out to be one of the best times I've ever had filming.

Q15

[Q] Playboy: You made an offbeat comedy-drama called Thunderpants, about a kid with a freakish ability to break wind. Do you have any freakish bodily abilities?

[A] Giamatti: At one time I could make myself fart. When I was a kid I had a friend who was somehow able to do it and, as he explained it, "It's like I'm breathing in through my asshole." Somehow that resonated with me, and I thought, I'll give this a try. It actually worked. I was able to manifest flatulence. I haven't done it in a long time. By the way, that movie, in which I play a can-do government guy with none of the high jinks they usually put me up to, is my personal favorite of all my performances on film.

Q16

[Q] Playboy: After co-starring with Russell Crowe in Cinderella Man, a Ron Howard-directed film in which you play the friend and trainer of real-life Depressionera boxer Jim Braddock, what would you tell your agents if they called with another role in a Crowe movie?

[A] Giamatti: That I'd be on the bullet train to Sydney. I loved him, loved working with him. A lot of people look at me and say, "You're the only person alive who's going to say that," but he was particularly nice to me. Why? Who knows? He's a complicated guy--a dark, moody, weird guy--but he was nice to me. I wish I could say he went after me and bit me or something, but he never did.

Q17

[Q] Playboy: That's almost disappointing, isn't it?

[A] Giamatti: You read about the old days, and it's Marilyn Monroe stumbling around drunk, somebody punching Richard Burton or someone disappearing for five days. Doesn't that stuff happen anymore? Or maybe it never did. Have people gotten duller? I have to say I've never seen anything unusually bad. It's all been pretty standard stuff, like bickering with the director. There's just not enough vomiting on the camera and punching Richard Burton anymore.

Q18

[Q] Playboy: Cinderella Man is all about prize-fighting. When was the last time you duked it out with someone?

[A] Giamatti: I went through a weird period in seventh grade when I was kind of scrappy and would take on some big kids. I discovered I could hold my own until I got my ass kicked by somebody, but the idea of punching someone in the face now is just bizarre to me. I'm not a physical guy, and one of the things I've always liked about acting is that it made me be physical. I always do my own stunts in movies. They're not particularly dangerous things, but I do like to throw myself around and jump down hills. That's about as physical as I get.

Q19

[Q] Playboy: What's worse, not getting an Oscar nomination for rave-reviewed work like American Splendor or Sideways or getting those commiserating phone calls from friends and colleagues?

[A] Giamatti: It was absurd to me that I would get that kind of attention. It's nice when people say that kind of thing about you, but I kept going, "Hey, everybody calm down about this. I hate to break anybody's heart, but I really don't see it happening." If people think I was good in the movie, hey, that's good enough for me, for Christ's sake.

Q20

[Q] Playboy: Sure, but a gold statue would be nice too.

[A] Giamatti: Yeah, where's my little gold man? A nomination would mean greater cash flow, plus I'd be able to buy more Lovecraft and comic books. I hate to be so crass about it, but that would be nice. I'd say it would mean more interesting parts, but I don't feel as if I haven't gotten those. Does it guarantee you good work for a lifetime? Probably not, but it would be a dandy thing. Sure, why not?