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 has German, English, Dutch and English family ancestry. Her family lived directly next to the 20th Century Fox lot as she grew older, and she was a major movie buff from her earliest days. Her mother, who also enjoyed good films, was a schoolteacher, and her father was a lawyer. Paula says that as an teen she would get away by "pretending to be someone else" which is why it came 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 went on to pursue a film degree at the University of Southern California in an internship program for summer, and got a 3-month job making documentaries for PBS. In the end, she was able to serve as a production associate in TV documentaries and on Howie Mandel's talk show. She progressed to actually producing documentaries for Medical Diaries (2000) airing on Discovery Health Channel. Paula claims she loves what she's doing, however her goal was the same. She took acting lessons before deciding to switch gears and become a performer. She was almost immediately successful and, within three years, had played part in two major feature films: Hitch (2005) and Idlewild (2006) as well as the female leading lady in Deja Vu (2006) opposite Denzel Washington.