Every now and then an actor emerges with such striking presence and versatility that he elevates each character he inhabits into something completely unique and unforgettable, often propelling some productions to timeless classics along the way. In the fifties, sixties, and seventies, we had Alec Guinness and today, one of the best examples of such talent is Paul Giamatti. Whether it’s drama or comedy, fantasy or biography, TV or film, lead roles or supporting, Giamatti seems to have an endless well to draw upon for his humor-tinged villains, alienated men of conviction, and ordinary people battling the mundane.
A graduate of the Yale School of Drama, Giamatti first came to the attention of wider audiences through supporting roles in films like Private Parts (1997), The Truman Show (1998), and Saving Private Ryan (1998). After earning critical acclaim for his portrayal of comic book legend Harvey Pekar in the biographical dramedy American Splendor (2003), Giamatti caught an even bigger break with the 2004 release of Sideways, in which he played a disillusioned schoolteacher and wine connoisseur who embarks on a California-wine-country odyssey with his best friend. The film earned several Oscar nominations and won for Best Adapted Screenplay. Sideways also had a notable impact on the wine industry, helping to popularize pinot noir—though Giamatti is often quick to admit he knows nothing about wine.
Following the success of Sideways, Giamatti played an aggressive boxing promoter alongside Russel Crowe in The Cinderella Man (2006). While boxing films are replete with callous, cigar-chomping managers, oblivious to the pain of their charges, Giamatti’s portrayal of James Braddock’s manager, Joe Gould, added another dimension, humanizing his struggle to survive in a ruthless business during an unforgiving era. The performance earned him a Screen Actors Guild award for Best Supporting Actor, as well as Oscar and Golden Globe nominations.
One of Giamatti’s most unforgettable roles was that ofxxxin the commercially and critically successful film The Illusionist (2006), which also starred Edward Norton, Jessica Biel, and Rufus Sewell. Giamatti earned plaudits from critics for his portrayal of an ingenious and highly principled detective in the Holmesian tradition, who navigates his way down the cobblestoned streets of Vienna in a quest for the truth, and who, despite the darkness around him, never loses his humanity.
In 2008, HBO released the miniseries John Adams, with Giamatti in the title role opposite Laura Linney as Abigail. Director Tom Hooper, in a 2008 interview with The Los Angeles Times, described Adams as irascible, with anger problems and a huge ego, and said that Giamatti “fit the sense I had of Adams as an antihero, to explore the flaws of the man in addition to his greatness, [given] how brilliant Paul was at creating portraits of men struggling with demons, this kind of marginalized figure. When you cast Paul Giamatti, you knew you were getting a fresh look at the Revolution.” Unlike other biopics, which often glamorize their subjects, Giamatti leaned into the second president’s flaws, capturing not only the American hero who chose justice over expediency when it really mattered, but also the mercurial hypochondriac. The series won numerous awards, including multiple Golden Globes and Emmys.
The last decade has further showcased Giamatti’s versatility, from appearances in independent films like the 2010 dramatic comedy Barney’s Version (where he took home another Golden Globe) to his turns as Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke in HBO’s 2011 film Too Big to Fail and the affable chauffeur Ralph in Disney’s 2013 biographical drama Saving Mr. Banks. Perhaps most visibly, for the past six years, Giamatti has starred in the hugely successful Showtime series Billions, riveting audiences with his U.S. Attorney (and later New York Attorney General) Chuck Rhodes, a fearless but flawed crusader against white collar crime. The sixth season of Billions aired in 2022, and it was announced in February that the show will be renewed for a seventh.
But screen successes aside, what most people probably don’t know about this famed actor is that he is a huge crime-fiction buff. A voracious reader with an almost unsurpassed knowledge of the mystery and crime genres, Giamatti has a library numbering in the thousands of books. This particular passion is what brings him to the pages of The Strand. Though he resides in Brooklyn, New York, he joined us by Zoom from Massachusetts, where he was at work on his latest project.
AFG: So how have you been doing through the pandemic?
PG: My job with the TV show Billions was sort of put off for a while. We didn’t start shooting until March of last year and then shot through pretty much the whole of last year until the beginning of this year. That went surprisingly better than I thought. They put Covid precautions in place, which actually worked. I have to admit that I didn’t trust the motion picture business was actually going to pull it off, but they have. I’m working on another movie now up in Boston and outside of Boston. It also seems to be going OK, but also the numbers have gone down.
AFG: What is your attitude about movies today? I mean, I actually like really old movies, but I am also happy with the movies that have been coming out in the last twenty years. I felt like we were in a phase in
the eighties and probably mid-nineties when, as a kid and a teenager, I would roll my eyes at some of the things I’d be watching. You know, the inspirational soundtrack-driven, corny films.
PG: Do you look back at that stuff with any fondness from the eighties and the nineties now? I don’t. I still look back at it and think, “This actually wasn’t good. I was right.” [laughs]
AFG: Yes, the only thing was my wife got me to see Back to the Future, and maybe I’m devolving, but I liked it.
PG: Those are fun. They still work. But I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head. I’m an old movie person too. And I think I said to you [earlier when we talked], I don’t read anything written past 1979 and I don’t watch a hell of a lot that was made past 1979 on TV [laughs] . . . And I like foreign movies because I don’t know who any of the people are, which helps, and I like genre stuff now—horror movies . . .I do agree with you, I tend to think there was a kind of dead period from the mid-eighties to the late nineties where it was not great. I’m not a big rom-com guy and that was a big time for rom-coms. Lately, I’m terrible. I don’t watch a lot of new things. If I’m going to watch something, I tend to watch something old. And I like watching stuff I’ve seen already too, because I know what I’m going to get. [laughs]
AFG: I like the old Ealing Studios films with Alec Guinness, The Ladykillers and—
PG: The Lavender Hill Mob and films like that. This is one, I don’t know if it’s an Ealing movie, but I love Kind Hearts and Coronets as well. I think that’s a nearly perfect movie, everything about it: the writing, the acting, the cinematography, the music—everything is almost perfect.
AFG: Even the ending? [laughs] I wanted him to get away with it.
PG: No, no, he can’t. Everybody’s got to get killed in that play. It’s a really good black comedy—everybody dies. [laughs]
AFG: I know you’re a big Twilight Zone fan, as I am. Have you seen the new one? It’s fantastic.
PG: I haven’t seen the new one, no. They’re not all reboots of the old episodes though, are they?
AFG: No they’re not. Some are different takes on the old episodes, and some are completely new.
PG: I’ll try it. I’m always dubious about whether it can be as good as the old one.
AFG: And I love Tales of the Unexpected. Did you ever see that one?
Paul Giamatti in THE ILLUSIONIST
PG: I do remember that one. I liked it too. The Roald Dahl stuff is great. I like the old Alfred Hitchcock show, the old Tales from the Crypt was good.
AFG: So the question I need to ask you, because you are a very big reader, is: will you ever be writing a book?
PG: I would love to, but I don’t think I actually have any talent to do it. I wish! Now here’s this, when I was a kid I liked to write and I loved to have creative writing assignments, and I would try to write like a Hammond Innes story. So I would write some ridiculous adventure story. [laughs] I was constantly trying to write like Alistair MacLean—all those guys I loved when I was a kid. Or a mystery like Dorothy Sayers. But I have no actual gift for writing and the problem is, I think, I’ve read too much of this stuff so I’m only going to try to imitate someone. Or I’m going to write something and never think it’s good enough. I also think I’ve been acting so long—and acting is such a visceral, immediate art form and it suits my temperament—having to sit down and write is very difficult for me. I don’t have the ability to sit and concentrate for that long. [laughs]
AFG: I hope you change your mind one day. I think if you read enough, writing comes easier to you. One of the worst things for me as an editor is when I hear a writer say, “Oh, I write more than I read.”
PG: It was crazy when you told me you were talking to some writer and he said he’d never heard of—
AFG: Eric Ambler.
PG: How can you not have heard who Eric Ambler is?! How can you be writing crime or thrillers and not know who Eric Ambler
is? I mean he’s the best. He’s amazing.
AFG: Eric Ambler’s, Graham Greene’s spy novels, these are required reading for anybody who wants to be a thriller writer.
PG: I think so. I agree with you entirely. Eric Ambler is amazing.
AFG: Epitaph for a Spy, Background to Danger.
PG: Epitaph for a Spy is a great one. He wrote lots of odd ones too, later. I read one a little while ago which was called The Levanter, about terrorists. It was not bad. I’d sort of heard that he fell off after a while, but I thought it was pretty good. Or maybe I’m getting less critical as I get older and I’m thinking, “Sure, this is great.” [laughs]
AFG: The one that I like that was also post-1950 was Light of Day. And they made a film basedon it with Peter Ustinov and Melina Mercouri—
PG: Topkapi! It’s a great heist movie. I love all this stuff, which is why
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