Biography

Paula Patton

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Paula Patton was born in Los Angeles, California, to Joyce (Vanraden) and Charles Patton. Her father is Black and her mother, who is Caucasian, has German, English and Dutch ancestry. Her family lived across the street from the 20th Century Fox lot when she was growing up and she was a fan of films from her earliest years. Her mother, who also appreciated good films, was a schoolteacher, and her father was a lawyer. Paula claims that as a girl she would escape by "pretending to be someone else" so it was not a surprise that she acted in high school plays at Hamilton Magnet Arts High School. Her favorite role was that of "Abigail" in "The Crucible." However, she went on to study film at the University of Southern California in a summer program, and won a 3-month assignment making documentaries for PBS. This led to her working as a production assistant for TV documentaries, and also for Howie Mandel's talk show. She progressed to actually producing documentary segments for Medical Diaries (2000) airing on Discovery Health Channel. Paula now professes that she liked what she was doing, but her dream remained the same as when she was small so she took acting lessons and shifted gears to become a performer. She was almost immediately successful and, within three years, had played parts in major features, Hitch (2005) and Idlewild (2006) and the female lead in Deja Vu (2006) opposite Denzel Washington.
- IMDb mini biography by: Brian Greenhalgh

Dated Robin Thicke for 14 years before marrying. They met when she was 15 and he was 14 at a teen club in Los Angeles.
(October 3, 2014) Filed for divorce from her husband of 9 years Robin Thicke following an 8-month-long separation.
Singer Robin Thicke wrote his 2006 song "Lost Without U" for her.
Gave birth to her first child at age 34, a son named Julian Fuego Thicke on April 6, 2010. The child's father is her now ex-husband, Robin Thicke.
Has played the love interest of Denzel Washington in two films - Deja Vu (2006) and 2 Guns (2013).

Making African American films are hard in Hollywood. We need to rely on a support network and bring more cohesion to different filmmakers, actors, producers etc. It's a very difficult business. There aren't a lot of Africans Americans or people of color in high positions in Hollywood that we can green-light films.
A movie is painting, it's photography, it's literature - because you have to have the screenplay - it's music. Put a different soundtrack to a comedy and it's a tragedy. A movie combines all those forms and forces you to pay attention for two hours with a group of people.
The older I get, the more I accept and appreciate myself.
Sometimes I do yoga, sometimes it's kickboxing, sometimes it's weight training, sometimes it's Pilates.
If you're an actress and even one person knows your name, you're lucky.

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