Paul Giamatti is an actor’s actor. As an actor’s actor, you better believe he wanted in on that sweet primate action when Tim Burton announced a now-infamous remake of Planet of the Apes starring Mark Wahlberg. However, Giamatti’s agents would like their client’s actual face to be seen on screen, thus boosting his profile, and he was having none of that.
During a new roundtable talk for The Hollywood Reporter, Giamatti opened up about how he made it passionately (and fiery) clear to his agents that they better not screw him by telling the studio he wants to play a boring human. Paul Giamatti wanted to be a damn ape, and they’d better make it happen:
No, that was the strange fulfillment of a deep dream. To be an ape in the Planet of the Apes? If that had been it for me, I would have died happy. I couldn’t believe I was going to be able to play a talking orangutan! My agents were like, “Don’t you want to be a human so they can see your face?” And I was like, “If you tell them I want to be a human, I’m going to burn the agency.” Who wants to be the human?
The actor also tossed out some more love for his role in the Howard Stern biopic Private Parts. Giamatti played Stern’s obnoxious and over-bearing boss in a memorable role that Giamatti credits for launching his career.
“And Pig Vomit? I couldn’t believe I was being allowed off the chain like that,” he told the THR roundtable. “I’d just been in a drama school, which always felt terribly confining. I mean, look at me, man, I’m not like a Shakespeare guy. I got out and got this opportunity to do something that was absolutely bananas.”
(Via The Hollywood Reporter)