Paula Patton

Paula Patton was born in Los Angeles, California, to Joyce (Vanraden) and Charles Patton. Her father is African-American while her mother is caucasian and is of German, English and Dutch heritage. Her family lived just next to the 20th Century Fox lot as she grew older, and she was an avid fan of movies from her early days. Her mother was a teacher and her father worked as an attorney. Paula claims that as a girl 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 most loved role was one of Abigail in "The Crucible". After having graduated from the University of Southern California's summer camp, she pursued film studies and was given a 3-month assignment to create documentaries on PBS. She was later hired as a production assistant for documentaries for television and Howie Mandel's talk show. After a few months, she was able to make documentary segments for Medical Diaries 2000 on Discovery Health Channel. Paula says that she enjoyed her work, however, her goal remained the same as when she was a child, and she began acting classes and shifted gears to become a performer. She was almost immediately successful and, in just three years, she had acted in part in two major feature films: Hitch (2005) and Idlewild (2006) and was the female character in Deja Vu (2006) opposite Denzel Washington.