The son of revered Yale President and Major League Baseball commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti, Paul Giamatti first rose to prominence as Howard Stern's enraged nemesis in 1997's Private Parts. A slew of flashy, scene-stealing supporting roles followed, in films including 1999's Man On The Moon and 2001's Planet Of The Apes. And in 2003, Giamatti made the leap from supporting-scene stealer to leading man as prickly comic-book legend Harvey Pekar in American Splendor. Giamatti followed up with 2004's Sideways, a bittersweet buddy road comedy widely tipped to score Giamatti the Oscar nomination he inexplicably didn't receive for American Splendor. Alas, he didn't earn that Oscar nomination until his turn as a ringman in Cinderella Man. In weeks to come, Giamatti will be seen in his highest-profile starring gig to date, M. Night Shyamalan's new film Lady In The Water, as well as the period drama The Illusionist and—if it gets a wide release—the falconry drama The Hawk Is Dying. The A.V. Club recently spoke with Giamatti about playing an orangutan, acting opposite hawks, Big Momma's House, and why he felt he didn't deserve to win an Oscar for Sideways.
The A.V. Club: You've said that you didn't deserve to win an Academy Award for Sideways. Why?
Paul Giamatti: I certainly probably said that. [Laughs.] Sure. I don't think I gave a good enough performance to be nominated for it. I thought I gave a fine performance, but those things are supposed to be about giving an extraordinary performance, aren't they? I don't feel like I did. I feel like it's a great movie, and everybody's really good in it. I feel like Tom [Haden Church] and Virginia [Madsen] actually gave the kind of performances that should have been nominated. I don't feel like I did. I'm not putting myself down or anything. I did a good job. But I always thought those things were about doing better than a good job.
AVC: Is that one of your favorite performances? Do you feel like there's another film where you really knocked it out of the park?
PG: No. I think I'm a fine enough actor. There are performances that I prefer to that one. I see a lot of flaws in that one. There are other things that I think I'm better in.
AVC: What kind of flaws? What would you have done differently?
PG: I don't know that it's so much what I would have done differently in playing the character—like I would have chosen necessarily to have done different things—but I think I would be more relaxed about doing it now. I think I felt a lot of pressure doing it, because I'd never played a part in a movie that big before. So I think I worked too hard at it in the wrong ways. I overworked it.
AVC: What about American Splendor? That was a lead role.
PG: Yeah. I prefer that performance. I think I was better in that one. I overworked that one, too. I think I have a tendency to overwork things. I have a hard time finding that sweet spot that most actors seem to be able to hit where they're doing the exact right amount of work, not overthinking, not underdoing it. I seem to either overdo it or underdo it, in my opinion.
AVC: What would be an example of a film where you underdid it?
PG: There are lots of those. I felt like I did lots of crappy work in the past. I can't even tell ya.
AVC: Do any of them involve Martin Lawrence in a fat suit?
PG: No, I actually think I was swinging a little too hard on that one. Believe it or not, I might actually have been working a little too hard. I probably should have backed off a little. Maybe I should have phoned that in a little more. [Laughs.] I don't really have any opinion about my performance in Big Momma's House.
AVC: When did you first start wanting to act?
PG: I don't know. I went to a grade school where we did the school play every year, and I always enjoyed doing it. I never copped to it, because then I'd seem like a geek, even though I was really into doing it. I suppose then. I don't feel like I ever had that moment where I was like, "Oh my God, this is destiny." I didn't have that kind of thing. Honestly, I think when I was in Seattle, and I was screwing around at this little theater, and then I actually made a little bit of money at it, that's maybe when I had more of a "road to Damascus" sort of thing, where I felt like I could actually do it for a living.
AVC: You studied drama at Yale, right?
PG: I eventually did, after realizing I could do it for a living. I thought I might as well get some training in it and actually know something about it, so I might actually know what the hell I was doing. Maybe that would help or be useful in some way. So then I went back to graduate school.
AVC: Was it at all intimidating growing up the son of a such a prominent man?
PG: I didn't know any different. I grew up around that university, and all my friends were professors and stuff like that.
AVC: Did you ever think of rebelling by going to Harvard?
PG: [Laughs.] No, it never crossed my mind. There were other places I thought about attending, but I actively wanted to go there. I liked it and I got in, so I went there.
AVC: Did you do a lot of theater after college?
PG: I did some regional theater. I acted in Seattle. I did off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway. I did Broadway. I did any theater work I could find.
AVC: Any highlights or lowlights?
PG: Plenty of lowlights. I was in plenty of crappy regional productions. I was in a god-awful production of Golden Boy, Clifford Odets' play about the boxing violinist, the guy who can't decide whether he wants to be a boxer or a violinist. It's a great play, but it was just beyond crappy. With Odets, it can go horribly wrong, and it was just awful.
AVC: Any Starlight Expresses on your resume?
PG: No. I've never played in anything like that. I never did any musicals. I'm trying to think of really crappy stage plays I was in. I know there were a lot of them. A lot of the time, it was like a really bad production of a Molière play, a highbrow thing that went south and was just bad. Just terrible. And bad Shakespeare is even worse than Starlight Express. You're handing a real cultural artifact over to people, and it just sucks.
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