In the archives today: a 2005 profile of the mighty Paul Giamatti, recounting how we discussed his life over an extremely long Mexican lunch in Brooklyn.

Not discussed in the article: that Giamatti and I went to Yale at the same time. We didn’t know each other, but he was generally recognized as the best actor on campus and I saw pretty much every play he was in (which was a lot of plays). I also was briefly in the same Shakespeare production as him: he had a leading role and I was a supernumerary. I dropped out to be in a different show, but I did show up for one rehearsal where Giamatti manhandled and robbed me, so I can honestly say that I’ve acted with him. Also not included in the article: our long digression on which Yalies of our era had made it as professional actors (him, Ed Norton, Josh Malina, Jen Westfeldt, Melissa Errico, Phil LaMarr, probably some other people we didn’t think of).

posted 14 July 2009 in Archives, Articles and tagged Paul Giamatti, Yale. no comments yet