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Paul Giamatti, 2024 Oscars nominee for “The Holdovers”
Difficult characters are a Paul Giamatti specialty. He’s portrayed a cantankerous John Adams and a brutal U.S. Attorney in “Billions,” and, in his latest movie, “The Holdovers,” Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, a bitter teacher at a New England boarding school.
Hunham is in charge of the students with nowhere to go at Christmas, and he forms a bond with a rebellious kid and the school’s grieving cook, played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph, whose deceased son attended the school.
People have described the movie as a “Scrooge-like Christmas story,” with Giamatti being Scrooge. He thinks that’s apt.
“It has a ‘Christmas Carol’ thing,” Giamatti says. “I think all three of the characters are Scrooge a little bit. They all need to kind of move out of a place that they’re stuck in.”
The 56-year-old’s performance has earned him a nomination for best actor at the Oscars, and Critics Choice and Golden Globe awards. After his win at the Golden Globes, Giamatti says he took his award to a burger place before going out to parties and “fancy things.”
Giamatti’s role in “The Holdovers” was written for him.
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“There’s times when I think, ‘Why was this written specifically for me, a man who smells like fish that nobody likes?'” he says. “Then I look at it and go, ‘I think I know.'”
One reason: Giamatti, raised in Connecticut, attended a prep school himself.
“Most of it was pretty familiar to me,” he says of “The Holdovers.” “I had teachers like this guy. I think those schools are different now, but I had teachers that were the sort of strict, disciplinarians like this.”
He was not a troublemaker in school, although Giamatti admits he would cut classes to read in the library on his own. That bookishness ran in the family, as Giamatti’s mother, Toni, was a teacher, and his dad, Bart, was once president of Yale University and, later, Major League Baseball Commissioner.
Giamatti didn’t act professionally until after he’d graduated from college, although he “did it as an extracurricular thing” before then. He began his professional career in plays and, later, movies.
“I started making a very small living at it,” he says. “But I was deceived into thinking, ‘Oh, I can do this. This is not too bad.’ So, I think that’s when I went, ‘I should just do this. This is what I love to do.'”
Giamatti had one scene in his very first movie, a slasher called “Past Midnight,” which he says he’s never watched. After that, he quickly landed small roles opposite some big names in major films like “My Best Friend’s Wedding” and “Saving Private Ryan.”
He has a biopic to thank for his big break. It was about Howard Stern, and Giamatti played his put-upon corporate handler, Kenny “pig vomit” Rushton.
“It was a fantastic role,” says Giamatti. “It is an incredibly energetic and kind of crazy role with lots of latitude to do crazy things.”
Giamatti is known for playing curmudgeons, and he doesn’t mind his work being described that way.
“I often think that, really, I just play kind of complicated people. People with a complicated relationship to the world,” he says. One such character was Miles Raymond, the boozy failed writer and wine snob in the Academy Award-winning movie “Sideways.”
Outside of acting, Giamatti records a podcast called “Chinwag” and plays the theremin in his free time.
“I feel like every theremin player in the world is so insulted by what I do,” he says while recording “Chinwag” for an audience at the S.F. Sketchfest. Giamatti explains on “Sunday Morning” that his interest in “strange things” and “weird topics,” from UFOs to Big Foot and beyond, is why he does the podcast.
Looking back on all of the roles he’s played so far, one of Giamatti’s favorites was a part where he played no human at all. He played an orangutan, which, he says, “was really fun.”
“And so I was completely transformed, which, for an actor, is great,” he recalls. “I’d look in the mirror and I was gone.”‘
Giamatti says he cannot explain exactly why actors like himself may be drawn to “hiding” behind their roles.
“It’s a very strange way of connecting with other people. It’s very weird,” he says. “But I actually think it’s a good thing. I enjoy being weird. It’s OK to be weird. Weird is all right.”
Produced by Reid Orvedahl and Kay M. Lim. Edited by Carol A. Ross.
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Sen. Thom Tillis says “the scope” of Helene damage in North Carolina “is more like Katrina”
As recovery missions and repairs continue in North Carolina more than a week after Hurricane Helene carved a path of devastation through the western part of the state, the state’s Republican Sen. Thom Tillis called for more resources to bolster the relief effort and likened the damage to Hurricane Katrina’s mark on Louisiana in 2005.
“This is unlike anything that we’ve seen in this state,” Tillis told CBS News’ Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Sunday morning. “We need increased attention. We need to continue to increase the surge of federal resources.”
Hurricane Helene ripped through the Southeast U.S. after making landfall in Florida on Sept. 26 as a powerful Category 4 storm. Helene brought heavy rain and catastrophic flooding to communities across multiple states, including Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, with North Carolina bearing the brunt of the destruction. Officials previously said hundreds of roads in western North Carolina were washed out and inaccessible after the storm, hampering rescue operations, and several highways were blocked by mudslides.
Tillis said Sunday that most roads in the region likely remained closed due to flooding and debris. Water, electricity and other essential services still have not been fully restored.
“The scope of this storm is more like Katrina,” he said. “It may look like a flood to the outside observer, but again, this is a landmass roughly the size of the state of Massachusetts, with damage distributed throughout. We have to get maximum resources on the ground immediately to finish rescue operations.”
Hurricane Katrina left more than 1,000 people dead after it slammed into Louisiana’s Gulf Coast in August 2005, flooding neighborhoods and destroying infrastructure in and around New Orleans as well as in parts of the surrounding region. It was the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. in the last 50 years, and the costliest storm on record.
The death toll from Hurricane Helene is at least 229, CBS News has confirmed, with at least 116 of those deaths reported in North Carolina alone. Officials have said they expect the death toll to continue to rise as recovery efforts were ongoing, and a spokesperson for the police department in Asheville told CBS News Friday their officers were “actively working 75 cases of missing persons.”
On Saturday, the U.S. Department of Transportation released $100 million in emergency funds for North Carolina to rebuild the roads and bridges damaged by the hurricane.
“We are providing this initial round of funding so there’s no delay getting roads repaired and reopened, and re-establishing critical routes,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement. “The Biden-Harris administration will be with North Carolina every step of the way, and today’s emergency funding to help get transportation networks back up and running safely will be followed by additional federal resources.”
President Biden previously announced that the federal government would cover “100%” of costs for debris removal and emergency protective measures in North Carolina for six months.
With North Carolina leaders working with a number of relief agencies to deal with the aftermath of the storm, Tillis urged federal officials to ramp up the resources being funneled into the state’s hardest-hit areas. The senator also addressed a surge in conspiracy theories and misinformation about the Biden Administration’s disaster response, which have been fueled by Republican political figures like former President Donald Trump.
Trump falsely claimed that Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent in the November presidential election, were diverting funds from Federal Emergency Management Agency that would support the relief effort in North Carolina toward initiatives for immigrants. He also said baselessly that the administration and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, were withholding funds because many communities that were hit hardest are predominantly Republican. Elon Musk has shared false claims about FEMA, too.
“Many of these observations are not even from people on the ground,” Tillis said of those claims. “I believe that we have to stay focused on rescue operations, recovery operations, clearing operations, and we don’t need any of these distractions on the ground. It’s at the expense of the hard-working first responders and people that are just trying to recover their lives.”
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