Paula Patton

Paula Patton is the daughter of Joyce (Vanraden) Patton and Charles Patton. Her father is African American and her mother is caucasian. She is of German, English, Dutch and English family ancestry. Her family lived across the street from the 20th Century Fox lot when she was growing old and she was a huge fan of movies from her early childhood. Her mother, who also liked good movies was a teacher, as was her father, a lawyer. Paula claims that as a girl she would escape by "pretending to pretend to be someone else" and it shouldn't come as a surprise that she acted in high school plays at Hamilton Magnet Arts High School. Her most loved role was one of Abigail in "The Crucible". She pursued her studies at the University of Southern California, where she completed a course in film. In that time, she was granted a three-month assignment to make documentaries for PBS. Then, she was hired as a production assistant for documentaries on TV and Howie Mandel's talk show. Later, she produced documentary segments for Medical Diaries (2000 on Discovery Health Channel). Paula declares she loves what she's doing, but her ambition was the same. She began acting classes before deciding to switch gears and become a performer. Her career was nearly instant success, playing major roles in Hitch (2005), Idlewild (2006), and also the lead female role in Deja Vu (2006) opposite Denzel.