Paul Giamatti on wrestling in his new film, Win Win, the perils of acting on your knees and why the US hates a loser

Having been a character actor for many years you have, since Sideways, become a leading man. Is that a surprise?

Well, I never expected it to happen. It sort of came along, it was a nice thing. I had taken the lead in plays from time to time but I was never expecting to do it in movies…

Is it tougher to carry a film than to play a supporting role?

In a funny way as the lead you can relax a little more. The hardest thing I think is to come in and do one scene. I have enormous sympathy for those people, because I have done it myself a hundred times. You come on to a set and have to do two lines. Or you have to turn up and just cry. That is really hard, and you need to be really good.

Your new movie, Win Win, casts you as a small-town lawyer and a high-school wrestling coach who is struggling to pay the bills and cuts some moral corners. It struck me as one of the subtlest responses to the credit crisis I've seen. Do you agree that it broadens our idea of heroism in a way?

I'm glad you say that. It's interesting. The response in the US is to see the character as kind of despicable, they have got on their high moral horse about it. As much as people like the movie and sympathise with it, they call the guy a loser.

Maybe Brits are more sympathetic to losers?

Well, I suppose failure is more interesting in general than success. It is closer to life maybe. A couple of reviews of Win Win were very indignant that the guy didn't get his boiler fixed [it is threatening to explode throughout the film]. It was like: why can't he get off his ass and fix it? It's funny. I'll be interested to see if that's what people think in the UK. I did a movie called American Splendor, based on the comic book writer Harvey Pekar. That character was very much judged as a loser in the US, too, a sort of a pathetic slob, but in Europe no one saw it like that. He was much more sympathetic. I guess that says something about both places.

Are you are a watcher of your own films?

I generally have to watch them at a premiere. So that's at least once, but after that I don't go out of my way to see them. I have occasionally caught one on TV which is extremely scary. I think it's important not to see myself too much though, in case I get lulled by my own tricks or something.

There is a certain amount of wrestling in this film. I don't get the sense you are a natural born wrestler, but you did some research?

I did wrestle in high school. I was actually, believe it or not, OK at it. But the first time I got severely beaten up by a guy I lost interest. I didn't have the desire to kill the other guy, which is sort of what you need. High-school wrestling is an odd sport, pretty marginal. But people take it extremely seriously.

The confrontation you had in the film reminded me of some of the other great comic physical moments in your films like the wallet-retrieval episode in Sideways. I'm guessing you love doing those scenes?

Yeah, in theatre I always liked to do quite extreme physical things. I did a play once where I was a midget and walking around on my knees all the time which, you know, took its toll a little. And I have injured myself a lot throwing myself around, broken arms and stuff. The problem with getting injured when you get older is that it takes longer to recover. I've broken fingers in the past and done nothing about it, but you do that now and you know you will kind of live with it for ever.

There is often a nice tension between the physicality and some of the more cerebral aspects of your characters. You were at Yale, where your father was a professor, and later the university president. What did he teach?

He was a comparative literature professor, looking at Italian and English poetry of the early Renaissance. It was kind of hard to avoid when I was growing up. And I definitely was interested in all of that, a keen reader of literature, still am…

Your original ambition, I saw somewhere, though, was to be an animator?

It was one thing I thought a lot about certainly. I used to draw these bizarre and broken-up things. One of my favourite things growing up was Asterix, those books. So I learned a lot from that, and I guess my drawing used to look that way, too. It didn't work out of course.

Looking at the range of parts you are currently playing, from Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve to King John, it would be fair to say you seem keen not to be typecast?

The thing is I don't have any one kind of movie that I am interested in. I am doing a musical next, in fact. Rock of Ages. I like the idea of having a whole bunch of people around me singing and dancing. The fun of it is that it is set in the mid-80s with all that big stadium music: Journey, Whitesnake, glam metal, all that. Can't wait.

That said, there seems a space just now for a great American comic actor in the Phil Silvers or Woody Allen kind of mould…?

I like doing that kind of comedy, and I am called on to do it more often, but I wouldn't want to do only that. I mean I just had a total blast playing King John. But then, I guess he was a pretty neurotic loser, too.

There is a line in Win Win that goes, "I did not think it would get this complicated" which you seemed to say with particular feeling. Does anxiety come naturally to you?

Am I an anxious guy? I think I have been called upon as an actor a lot to access emotions like that. But I don't really think I am a big worrier. I don't see myself like that. But I guess other people do. Which is maybe worrying in itself. But yes, "I did not think it would get this complicated." I definitely find myself thinking that as I get older. Mostly in a good way.