Paul Giamatti On Being A Leading Man
Paul Giamatti has long been considered one of the most respected actors on the stage and screen. Earlier this year, he received an Academy Award nomination for the drama "Cinderella Man," and this Friday he's back in theaters starring in writer-director M. Night Shyamalan's chilling fantasy "Lady In The Water."
Giamatti stopped by The Early Show Wednesday to talk with co-anchor Rene Syler about his latest project.
"You are a leading man in a big-budget, big-time movie. You and Tom Cruise," Syler joked.
"Me and Tom Cruise. Of course. That's been coming for years. Everybody could see that coming, right?" Giamatti said, laughing. "It's a wonderful thing. It's a great thing. But totally unexpected."
The movie, "Lady In The Water," was written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who also did "The Sixth Sense," "Unbreakable," "The Village" and "Signs."
"Great movies, very strange. His own thing going on," Giamatti said. "It's a fantasy, it's a fairy tale, it's not scary. It has scary things in it. Kids will like, adults will like it. But it's a very kind of strange fairy tale is basically what it is."
In the film, Giamatti plays a building janitor named Cleveland Heep.
"And he has a dark past that comes out in the movie," Giamatti explained. "And I save some kind of creature who lives under the pool and all kinds of things happen involving all the people who live in the building."
The "creature" is played by Bryce Dallas Howard.
"She's fantastic," Giamatti said of his co-star. "She knows her lines. Big change up from me. No, she's very professional. Very smart. Works very hard. Knows what she's doing. Everything I don't do. So she filled in all the gaps for me."
The film also features Jeffrey Wright and Freddy Rodríguez. "Everybody is great in it. He got an amazing ensemble here," Giamatti remarked.
"I read that Night actually wrote this role for you. He called you his Richard Dreyfuss," Syler said.
"That's more like it. Everybody needs a Dick Dreyfuss in their lives," Giamatti said, laughing. "So that makes him my Spielberg … no, I didn't know he wrote the role for me. That's really nice."
"I also read that you say you feel more like a supporting role actor. What do you mean by that?" Syler asked.
"I feel like if I think of myself as the guy who is supposed to be out front, that's too much pressure," Giamatti said. "I guess I just like to think of myself as always supporting the other actors or something. I don't know. Just not necessarily hugely — it's always an ensemble in my mind."
Talking about whether the movie is frightening, Giamatti said, "And it does have scary moments and there's monsters in it and things like that, but I wouldn't say it's a horror movie or scary overall."
Asked if he would take his 5-year-old son to the film, Giamatti said, "No, he's 5. He scares really easy. Eight years old and up I think."
"I think you single-handedly are responsible for increasing sales in pinot noir. 'Sideways' really was the role that put the rocket boosters on your career," Syler remarked.
"It did. And it killed merlot. It helped me out an enormous amount," said Giamatti.
Making the movie, also starring Thomas Haden Church, was "nothing but fun," said Giamatti. "It was great. Nobody expected it to be something anybody was going to like."
Lately, Giamatti has been very busy; the thriller "The Illusionist" is coming out in August, co-starring Edward Norton, in which Giamatti plays a chief inspector in the Austro-Hungarian special police. He also plays a bad bug exterminator in the upcoming movie "The Ant Bully."
"It's a very bizarre wacky movie," Giamatti said of the film, in which he does voice-over work. "I can't do all the mugging and silly faces," he added.
"What has fame done for you? When you go down and get a ham sandwich, people are like, 'Hey, hey, you're the guy,' " asked Syler.
"That's exactly it. 'Hey, hey, you're the guy.' Which is fine," said Giamatti. "It's a nice level, comfortable enough level for me so I can still get a ham sandwich."