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 heritage. While growing up in the area, her family lived close to the 20th Century Fox lot. She was a fervent film fan from her childhood. Her mom was a teacher while her father was an attorney. Paula claimed that she tried to escape when she was a young girl through "pretending" to appear to be someone different from herself. So it's not a surprise that she participated in Hamilton Magnet Arts High School performances. Her favorite character was that of "Abigail" in "The Crucible". In the end, she chose to learn film at the University of Southern California in the summer program and received a three-month contract to create documentary films for PBS. The result was that she began working as a production assistant in TV documentariesand for Howie Mandel's talk show. She progressed to actually producing documentaries for Medical Diaries (2000) airing on Discovery Health Channel. Paula declares she loves what she's doing, but her ambition was the same. She took acting lessons and changed gears to become a performer. She was almost immediately successful performing major roles in Hitch (2005), Idlewild (2006), and also the lead female role in Deja Vu (2006) opposite Denzel.