Paula Patton

Paula Patton was the daughter of Joyce (Vanraden) and Charles Patton. Her father is African American and her mother is caucasian, has German, English, and Dutch her ancestry. Her family lived right across from the 20th Century Fox lot when she was growing old and she was a huge fan of films from her earliest childhood. Her mother, too, who enjoyed good films, was a schoolteacher, as was her father, an attorney. Paula claims that as an adult she would escape from the world by "pretending to appear to be someone else" therefore it wasn't an unsurprising that she performed in plays for high school at Hamilton Magnet Arts High School. Her favorite role was "Abigail" from "The Crucible". She pursued her studies at the University of Southern California, where she completed a program for summers in film. In that time, she was awarded a three-month task to create documentaries on PBS. The result was that she began working as a production assistant for television documentaries, as well as on Howie Mandel's talk show. Later, she made documentary segments for Medical Diaries (2000 on Discovery Health Channel). Paula now professes that she was happy with the work she was doing however, her goal remained the same as when she was younger, and she began acting classes and shifted gears to become an actor. She was almost instantly successful and was featured in major roles in Hitch (2005), Idlewild (2006), and the lead female role in Deja Vu (2006) opposite Denzel.