Great Performances

J. SHELDON/FOCUS FEATURES
Naomi Watts in a scene from 21 Grams

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After LOTR , Astin took a slapstick holiday, playing with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore in 50 First Dates . He has started writing a book about his adventures in Middle-earth. "Through all the insanity," he says, "we accomplished this journey of 1,000 miles, foot by foot." Foot by tired, aching, hairy foot.

--R.C. Reported by A.L.G.

Paul Giamatti -- American Splendor
Paul Giamatti is the very definition of the phrase "working actor," the kind of guy who does small parts in big pictures and looks forward to doing big parts in small pictures. Ever reliable, never anyone's idea of a movie star, he has soldiered for Steven Spielberg in Saving Private Ryan , played a character known as Pig Vomit in the Howard Stern biopic Private Parts and portrayed a cowardly orangutan in the remake of Planet of the Apes . So when he was approached to play Harvey Pekar in American Splendor , it seemed to be just business as usual except that Pekar, the notably depressive writer of comic books about his grim life and glum times, was also going to be in the movie.

It was a novel and, says Giamatti, "intimidating" prospect. How many actors ever get to test their "interpretation" of a role against the real thing? But then he realized that the Pekar he was playing was "actually a character based on a character he had made of himself." Put simply, Giamatti didn't have to go looking for the real Harvey. It helped too that Pekar "seemed like he couldn't have cared less that they were making a movie about his life. It was like he came by for the free doughnuts and coffee," says Giamatti.

That's something Giamatti, 36, never does. He's shy and literally self-effacing as an actor but fiercely committed to his craft. Married with a young son, he's a bookish, family-oriented private-school and Yale graduate and the son of the late A. Bartlett Giamatti, once Yale's president and Major League Baseball's commissioner.

A triumph at Sundance a year ago, American Splendor is among the best-reviewed (deservedly so) movies of the year. Narratively splintered, full of hilarious, but homemade-looking special effects, it never sells out to sentimental uplift. Giamatti deftly walks the same line. He and Pekar share a physical resemblance both are chubby, round-shouldered and balding but he gives a performance that goes beyond mere impersonation. He infuses this cranky character with some of his own sweet tentativeness of spirit, giving Pekar an audience appeal that perhaps the more churlish original lacks. And he gives himself a problem. A self-confessed "escape artist," a master of submerging self in role, Giamatti is currently trying to escape the acclaim being heaped on him and his movie. Sorry, Paul, you've finally been found out as one of the movies' best character actors.

R.S. Reported by D.P.