Paul Giamatti names the kind of villain he would love to play
As well as being a respected character actor more than capable of delivering when afforded a leading role, Paul Giamatti has also repeatedly proven that he can ham it up on a level comparable to any of the industry’s most prominent scenery-chewers.
The two-time Academy Award nominee may have won a Primetime Emmy and a trio of Golden Globes for his dramatic performances. Still, whenever he gets the call to gauge his interest in playing a villain so over-the-top they’re entertainingly outrageous by default, then he’s happy to dive in with both feet.
Look no further than his incredibly malevolent turn while caked in prosthetics in Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes remake, the bulging veins of Shoot ‘Em Up‘s shouty antagonist Karl Hertz or the one-scene cameo as the most thickly-accented Russian cinema has ever scene in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. In addition, he has also performed a no-holds-barred descent into histrionics as the big bad of gun-toting guilty pleasure Gunpowder Milkshake.
There’s nothing he can’t do, but the opportunity to do the precise and highly specific kind of villainy he’s always dreamed of hasn’t yet made its way across his desk. Speaking to Vanity Fair, Giamatti outlined the exact terms and conditions that would allow him to realise the dream of a lifetime and offer his own definitive brand of moustache-twirling evil.
“I’d want an accent of some kind. I’d definitely want an accent. It’d be nice to have an animal with me of some kind,” he explained. “Not necessarily a cat, but something. Any animal, maybe. Not a parrot or something. Something real. I don’t know. An accent, though, of some kind I’d have to have. A guy who’s all in fur coats and stuff like that? Be great.”
The star caught many off-guard when he was announced as the star of 30 Coins‘ second season, with the Spanish mystery horror returning more than three years after its little-seen first run and with an awards-laden lead to boot. However, it makes more sense when Giamatti elaborated on what drew him to the project in the first place.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll do anything, sure. What is the part?’ She gave me the thing, and I was like, ‘Oh, it’s like a Bond film. Sure, I’ll do this, absolutely,’” Giamatti said. “Yeah, no question about it. He’s a Bond villain. This is my shot at playing a Bond villain. I’m never going to play a Bond villain other than this.‘”
Having decided that trying to kill 007 was beyond his abilities, Giamatti instead settled for the next best thing in his eyes, bringing all of the panache he’d envisioned for a hypothetical Bond baddie in a horror-tinged series that gave him free rein to play it however he wanted.
