There is a very good chance that one of Paul Giamatti’s finest performances was seen mainly by a bunch of 10-year-olds.
In February 2002, Giamatti appeared in Big Fat Liar, an unmistakably early-2000s family comedy starring Frankie Muniz, then riding high on the success of Malcolm in the Middle. It was hardly the sort of film destined to win awards or find its way into discussions about the great screen performances of the decade. And yet, watching it now, there is something rather wonderful about seeing an actor of Giamatti’s ability throwing himself so wholeheartedly into such gloriously silly material.
As Marty Wolf, a dishonest, egotistical Hollywood producer who steals a schoolboy’s creative writing project and turns it into a blockbuster, Giamatti is given the job of being utterly obnoxious. He is vain, pompous, childish and thoroughly unpleasant. He also suffers a series of increasingly ridiculous indignities as the young protagonists (Muniz and Amanda Bynes) exact their revenge, culminating in an outrageously entertaining scene in which he is turned blue to the upbeat tune of Duran Duran’s Hungry Like the Wolf. It is essentially a pantomime villain role, but Giamatti plays it with an almost ludicrous level of commitment. He doesn’t hold back or give the impression that the material is beneath him. Quite the opposite. He seems to relish every farcical moment, making Marty Wolf (along with his cymbal-banging monkey, Mr Funnybones) the film’s most entertaining presence.
That, as it turns out, is Paul Giamatti in a nutshell.
Nearly 25 years on, he has become one of the most consistently brilliant actors working in American cinema, although perhaps not one whose name comes up often enough when discussing the finest performers of his generation. He has never fitted the conventional Hollywood leading-man mould, nor does he seem particularly bothered about it. His gift lies in making us care about people who are not necessarily very easy to like: the insecure, the self-important, the disappointed, the lonely and the spectacularly deluded.
The obvious comparison is Philip Seymour Hoffman. Both actors had an extraordinary ability to make audiences invest in characters who, in less capable hands, might have been simply insufferable. They were equally convincing in supporting roles and as the central figures in a film, and neither relied on conventional leading-man appeal. Hoffman had a remarkable capacity for exposing the psychological depths of his characters; Giamatti has a similar gift, finding the comedy in their weaknesses and the sadness beneath their bluster. He can make you laugh at someone and feel for them almost simultaneously.
The comparison, incidentally, was being made long before either actor reached the height of their fame. A 2004 Guardian profile described Giamatti as a character actor to rival Hoffman and Steve Buscemi, recognising his particular aptitude for playing desperate, downtrodden men.
His breakthrough in Alexander Payne’s Sideways after two years after Big Fat Liar confirmed what those paying attention had already suspected. As Miles Raymond, a miserable, insecure wine enthusiast embarking on a road trip with an old friend, Giamatti delivered a performance that was painfully funny and unexpectedly moving. Miles is selfish, needy and frequently his own worst enemy, but Giamatti somehow makes him impossible to dismiss. It is a performance built around all the little things: the awkward pauses, the wounded pride, the attempts to disguise disappointment. He makes you recognise something of yourself in a man you wouldn’t particularly want to spend a weekend with.
The roles that followed only strengthened the case. There was his turn as boxing manager Joe Gould in Cinderella Man, the gloriously complicated title character in Barney’s Version, the ruthless ambition of Chuck Rhoades in Billions and, more recently, the wonderfully cantankerous but deeply wounded teacher in The Holdovers. His performance in the latter earned him another Academy Award nomination and reminded us of just how much he can do with a character who initially appears to have very little going for him. Underneath the grumpiness and the insults is a man carrying an enormous amount of hurt – and Giamatti knows how to break your heart with it.
For all the acclaim, though, Giamatti still feels curiously underappreciated. Maybe it’s because he rarely seems to be acting in the grand, showy sense of the word. There is no fuss, no obvious vanity, no sense of an actor desperately trying to make us admire his work. He simply gets under the skin of his characters. Even when they are behaving appallingly, he finds something recognisable in them.
His next film, Jesse Eisenberg’s musical comedy The Debut, sees him playing Jerry, a domineering community theatre director opposite Julianne Moore. It sounds like ideal territory for an actor who has spent so much of his career exploring ego, ambition and the often ridiculous lengths people will go to in order to feel important.
In some ways, it brings us back to Marty Wolf.
Perhaps the most satisfying thing about revisiting Big Fat Liar is realising that the talent was never hiding. It was right there, in a film largely remembered as a Frankie Muniz vehicle, being displayed for anyone who cared to look. While the young star was busy getting his revenge, Giamatti was busy showing just how good he was.
Sometimes a great actor announces himself in the most unlikely places. Occasionally, he does it with a blue face.
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