Giamatti may never be on a first-name basis with moviegoers, but his days of being confused with Deuce Bigalow are about to end. Finally blessed with a starring role, he gives the performance of his career in “American Splendor” as Harvey Pekar, the terminally grumpy author of a cult comic-book series (review). The film–which also stars Hope Davis (“About Schmidt”) and took the top prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival–is a blend of live action, animation and documentary footage, featuring narration by the real Pekar. In recent years, Giamatti has become Hollywood’s go-to guy for playing likably unlikable men. He specializes in schmucks, losers, wimps and twits–and he’s not all that concerned with broadening his range. “It’s what I’m offered, but at the same time I’m always, without fail, attracted to those smaller, more interesting parts,” says Giamatti, who brought a few seconds of comic relief as a klutzy general in “Saving Private Ryan” and played Jim Carrey’s sidekick in “Man on the Moon.” “I wouldn’t mind playing, like, an English butler–someone really calm and contained. But even if I got that part, I’d probably make him crazy in some way. I just can’t help myself.”
In Harvey Pekar, whose comics are an unflinching account of modern life’s tiny degradations, Giamatti has found a working-class antihero, a regular Joe from Cleveland who just happens to be a genius. The actor chased after the part because of two moments in the script: one in which Pekar is sitting on the toilet reading a fan letter from his future wife, Joyce (“Man, she has really good-looking handwriting,” he says), and one where he’s simply lying on a couch and reading. “When’s the last time you saw that in a movie–a guy just reading?” Giamatti asks. And risk the NC-17 rating? Is he crazy?
If there’s one thing Giamatti’s past characters all have in common, it’s that none of them scream “avid reader.” (OK, maybe the ape.) The 36-year-old actor is as funny and loquacious as the men he plays, but that’s all. In his lower-Manhattan apartment, his wife and 2-1/2-year-old son fight for space with thousands of books. “I buy at least one a day,” he says. “It’s a mania. My wife has been incredibly patient about this.”
Giamatti grew up in New Haven, Conn., where his father, Bart, was a Yale professor and later the school’s president. He attended Choate, then Yale Drama School. (“I had a pretty good in,” he jokes.) For five months in 1989, Bart was the commissioner of Major League Baseball, but his tenure will be remembered, sadly, for two things: he banned Pete Rose for life–and he died suddenly of a heart attack at 51. To the son’s bewilderment, people often ask him about Rose. “I never know what to say. It was my father’s job, not mine,” he says. “And all I think about, when the subject comes up, is that he died.”
Giamatti’s academic pedigree has come back to haunt him only once: on the set of Steven Spielberg’s World War II saga, where the film’s military consultant took an immediate dislike to the college boy. “He’d get right in my face and scream, ‘Goddammit, you can’t hold your gun like that!’ I’d just gotten there, so I had no idea who this guy was. And he’s screaming at me, ‘You idiot! You faggot!’ I guess he was good, because he kept everyone in that soldierly mood. But I was like, hey, I can pretend. That’s what they pay me for.”
Giamatti’s bookishness was perfectly suited for an intellect like Pekar’s. They didn’t get off to a flying start, though. “The producers threw us together just before shooting–neither of us had the guts to say no, of course–and it was horrible at first,” Giamatti says, laughing. “We picked him up in his driveway. And right away I could tell he was bumming out, because we’re both sitting there, just kind of looking around. Eventually he started talking to the driver. He says, ‘So where you from, man?’ And I’m just dying in the back seat. Finally I think to ask him if there’s a good used-book store around, and he was so happy to have something to do. He took me to this great store in Cleveland where he’s, like, beloved. We actually had a good time. But God, at first…” The real Pekar–who says Giamatti’s performance “got me down pretty well”–remembers the meeting a little differently. “It was no problem,” he says. “You know, when you consider that there are people out there who are murderers, I’m not so bad.” Far from it. In “American Splendor,” Giamatti turns Pekar into an American hero.
