Paula Patton

Paula Patton is the daughter of Joyce (Vanraden) Patton and Charles Patton. Her father is African American and her mother who is caucasian, has German, English, and Dutch ancestry. Her family lived directly across the street from the 20th Century Fox lot as she grew up and she was a huge film buff since the beginning of her life. Her mother was a teacher while her father worked as an attorney. Paula claimed that she tried to escape as an innocent child through "pretending" to appear to be someone different from herself. Therefore, it's no surprise that she was a part of Hamilton Magnet Arts High School performances. Her most loved role was that of "Abigail" in "The Crucible". After finishing the University of Southern California's summer camp, she pursued film studies and was assigned a three-month assignment to create documentaries on PBS. She was then hired as a production assistant on television documentaries as well as Howie Mandel's talk-show. Then, she created documentaries for Medical Diaries (2000 on Discovery Health Channel). Paula claims that she was happy with the work she was doing but her ambitions remained the same as when she was a child, so she took acting lessons and changed gears to become a performer. She quickly became successful and within three years of her debut, she had appeared in parts in major features, Hitch (2005) and Idlewild (2006) and was the female role in Deja Vu (2006) opposite Denzel Washington.