Paula Patton

Paula Patton was born in Los Angeles, California, to Joyce (Vanraden) and Charles Patton. Her father is African-American and her mother is caucasian and has German, English and Dutch origins. When she was a young girl and her family lived in front of the 20th Century Fox lot. She was a fervent movie enthusiast from childhood. Her mother, a teacher as well as her father, a lawyer, were both avid fans of films. Paula said that she attempted to get away as an infant through "pretending" to appear to be someone different from herself. So it is no surprise that she appeared in Hamilton Magnet Arts High School productions. Her favorite role was that of "Abigail" in "The Crucible". After finishing the University of Southern California's summer school, she pursued film studies and was offered a three-month project to make documentaries for PBS. This led to her working as a production assistant for television documentaries, as well as for Howie Mandel's talk show. Her career progressed to producing documentary segments for Medical Diaries (2000) airing on Discovery Health Channel. Paula says she is passionate about what she is doing but her ambition was the same. She began acting classes and switched gears to be a performer. She became a household name within a matter of days and was featured in Hitch (2006), Idlewild (2006) and Deja Vu (2006) as the female lead.