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 is of German, English, and Dutch heritage. When she was growing up and her family lived close to the 20th Century Fox lot. She was a fervent movie enthusiast from childhood. Her mom was a school teacher and her father was an attorney. Paula claims that when she was an teen she would get away from the world by "pretending to appear to be someone else" which is why it came as the case that she appeared in plays for high school at Hamilton Magnet Arts High School. 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. Then she was employed as a production assistant on documentaries for television and Howie Mandel's talk show. She progressed to actually producing documentaries for Medical Diaries (2000) airing on Discovery Health Channel. Paula claims that she loved her work, however her goals remains the same as it was when she was small and she began acting classes and changed gears to become a performer. It was a quick success and, within three years, she had acted in part in two major feature films: Hitch (2005) and Idlewild (2006) and the female character in Deja Vu (2006) opposite Denzel Washington.