Oscar 2024: Paul Giamatti, the one who beats Oppenheimer

TO Paolo Giamatti He would like to clarify that he doesn’t always have to be a charlatan. It would be nice, to change things up a bit, for him to play someone more inclined to express himself nonverbally: a taciturn horse breeder with a harrowing past, for example, or a world-class burglar with rope wounds. vowels caused by splinters.

“Please don’t make me talk so much,” he said recently, softly, his puppy dog ​​eyes pleading with the universe.

Giamatti’s viewers have a hard time imagining the actor speechless. He is one of cinema’s great talkers, often cited for his dazzling oratory flights. Let’s think about Miles’ profane reproach towards merlot Between the glasses (2004), in the Founding Father preaching the virtues of independence in the miniseries John Adams (2008) or in the cheeky boxing director Joe Gould in Cinderella’s man (2005, for which he earned his first Oscar nomination, as supporting actor). Giamatti’s desire for fewer lines of dialogue might sound like a Formula 1 car pining for a bus line.

His latest role – that of Paul Hunham in Those who remainOR The residues, a lonely and irascible teacher at a New England boarding school who takes care of students during the Christmas holidays – adds several memorable monologues to the actor’s work. But Giamatti (who is a strong lead actor and Oscar contender for this role) also infuses the character with a deep melancholy and a poorly concealed tenderness, traits that tend to reveal themselves in wordless physical gestures: a wrinkle on the chin, a half-closed eye. .

“There are close-ups where you can see not only his transition from one thought to the next, but all the little thoughts that happen in between,” he says. Alexander PayneDirector of Those who remainwho returned to work with Giamatti almost 20 years later Between the glasses. “You could hire him to play the Hunchback of Notre Dame and he would do a great job with him.”

The real Giamatti, as seen in a recent interview, is calm, kind and contemplative, with the habit of looking into the distance when he needs to reflect. If you haven’t followed BillionsGiamatti’s Showtime drama ended last year after seven seasons, his hair is whiter than he remembers, as if Santa Claus had a brother with a liberal arts degree.

A compliment and a disappointment

It is often mistakenly assumed that Giamatti resembles his characters, which is both a compliment and a shame. Payne is convinced that the actor did not receive an Oscar nomination Between the glasses (his co-stars Thomas Haden Church and Virginia Madsen were nominated in secondary categories) because he made it look too easy. In real life, as far as we know, Giamatti is not particularly interested in wine and knows little about it, much to the dismay of enthusiasts who approach him in restaurants.

Aside from a shared interest in the arcana of the Roman Empire, he has little in common with his character in Those Who Remain: an antiquities professor and university ogre with a weak eye and a skin condition that makes him smell like fish.

However, Giamatti felt strangely involved in the role. Both of his parents were teachers (his father, A. Bartlett Giamatti, was president of Yale University and later commissioner of Major League Baseball), and he graduated from a prep school similar to the one depicted in the film. More than any other role I can remember, he lost himself in the character, letting his memories and experiences of him influence his performance.

“I was more unconscious than normal, which was a little alarming because sometimes I felt like I wasn’t working hard enough, that I was lazy,” Giamatti says. “Even when I saw it, it was weird. I kept looking and thinking, ‘Is that what he was doing?'”

Giamatti was born and raised in Connecticut and studied bachelor’s and master’s of fine arts in English literature and theater at Yale. Although he soon discarded the idea of ​​following his parents into academia, he was always a voracious reader with a deep interest in science fiction, history, philosophy and mysticism. In ChinwagGiamatti’s podcast, which began last year with Stephen Asma, a philosophy professor and writer, questions friends and experts about obscure historical figures and the paranormal: ghosts, UFOs, Hollow Earth theory and ancient Egypt.

Asma became friends with Giamatti during the pandemic (the actor emailed him to congratulate him on an online lecture he gave on the science of imagination), and said that in their first conversation they spent two hours talking of the Swedish theologian. Emmanuel Swedenborg.

“Every wall of every room in her apartment has shelves full of books, at different levels of depth,” Asma said. “He reads more than most English teachers I know, but he wears it lightly.”

Both in life and in work Giamatti (56 years old) has always been attracted to marginal characters. He is the rare baseball fan who cares more about the umpires than the players. (“You’re an extremely important part of the game and yet you’re out of it, how is that?”)

Even in supporting roles: a ruthless slave trader in 12 Years a Slave, a devious musical director in Straight from Compton – his presence turns up the volume of humanity on screen.

When preparing for a role, Giamatti reads and rereads the script numerous times (he’s not usually a fan of improvisation), making deductions about how the character might look in 3D. He often seeks ways to transform himself physically, a task for which his normal boy appearance has proven useful.

“You could dress up like a chef, a butler, or the president of the United States in the 18th century, and it looks like I should wear those clothes,” he says.

For Those Who Stay, in which his character gradually forms a bond with a brilliant but troubled student (played by newcomer Dominic Sessa, nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actor) and with the director of the school canteen (Da ‘Vine Joy Randolph, nominated for best supporting actor (actress), Giamatti grew a mustache and wore a jacket inspired by his father’s similar one.

But the person he was most like, the man he sees now when he watches the film, is a biology teacher at his own high school, Choate Rosemary Hall: a sarcastic, “dull, flat-haired” man who seemed lonely and it smelled like an ashtray and a martini.

As a student, Giamatti didn’t think much of him and they rarely exchanged words. But one day, at the end of the school year, after an exam in which he had obtained unusually poor results, the teacher passed Giamatti’s desk.

“He gave me the test back and said, ‘Normally you do very well, what happened?’ I was 15 and I shrugged, “I don’t know.” But the boy stood there, he looked me in the eyes and asked: “Is everything okay?”

Giamatti, feeling uncomfortable, said yes and they never spoke about it again. But the fact that the professor – someone he had considered a stranger, or worse – not only knew him well enough to suspect something was wrong, but cared enough to ask him, always stays with him.

“It took me by surprise,” Giamatti says. “He doesn’t give a damn about us.”

Fountain: The New York Times