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 heritage. As a child her family was located right next to the 20th Century Fox lot. She was a huge film fan from her childhood. Her mother, too, who appreciated good films also taught at a school as was her father, a lawyer. Paula claims that when she was an teen she would get away from the world by "pretending to appear to be someone else" and it shouldn't come as the case that she appeared in plays for high school at Hamilton Magnet Arts High School. Her favorite character was "Abigail" from "The Crucible". She went on to learn film at the University of Southern California in an internship program for summer, and received a three-month contract to create documentary films for PBS. She was later hired as a production assistant for television documentaries as well as Howie Mandel's talk show. After a time she was able to make documentary segments for Medical Diaries 2000 on Discovery Health Channel. Paula declares she loves what she is doing but her goals were the same. She studied acting and then switched to becoming an actor. She quickly became successful and within three years, had played the lead roles in major movies, Hitch (2005) and Idlewild (2006) and also the female leading lady in Deja Vu (2006) opposite Denzel Washington.