Paula Patton

Paula Patton was the daughter of Joyce (Vanraden) and Charles Patton. Her father is African American and her mother is caucasian. She is of German, English, Dutch and English heritage. As a child, her family lived right close to the 20th Century Fox lot. She was a fervent movie enthusiast from childhood. Her mom was a teacher , and her father was an attorney. Paula claims that as a girl she would escape by "pretending to appear to be someone else" therefore it wasn't a surprise that she acted in high school plays at Hamilton Magnet Arts High School. Her favorite role was the one played by Abigail in "The Crucible". After graduating from the University of Southern California's summer camp, she took film classes and was given a 3-month assignment to create documentaries on PBS. The result was that she began working as a production assistant on TV documentariesand on Howie Mandel's talk show. Later, she produced documentary segments for Medical Diaries (2000 on Discovery Health Channel). Paula says she loves doing what she loves, but she dreams of becoming a performer. She became a household name quickly and was in Hitch (2006), Idlewild (2006), and Deja Vu (2006) as the female lead.