Paul Giamatti: I like playing weird, shady people
(CBS News) Emmy and Golden Globe-winner Paul Giamatti plays a shady manager in the star-studded new movie "Rock of Ages," adapted from the hit Broadway musical.
It's a type of role the actor has been drawn to playing throughout his career - the weird, slimy type.
He said even when he's hired to play a heroic figure, such as President John Adams for a recent HBO mini-series, he brings a nutty or seedy quality to the part.
"Somehow whatever I play ends up being sleazy. Somehow I think I make them sleazy," he said. "... I like playing weird, kind of shady people. It's more interesting. It's just a lot more interesting. I mean, I'm not going to play the hero of something. I'm just not. ... But they're more complicated, that's all."
Moviegoers may remember Giamatti from "Planet of the Apes" as Limbo, an orangutan who sells people, in "Sideways" as a curmudgeon wine connoisseur, and in "Cinderella Man" as a boxer's troubled manager.
"Rock of Ages" is in theaters June 15.
For more with the actor on his singing in the movie, his weight loss and his upcoming role in Shakespeare's "Hamlet," watch the video in the player above.