A devil of a time playing himself

Paul Giamatti confronts Russian gangsters in efforts to regain his soul in Cold Souls. Photo / Supplied

Ever wondered what your soul might look like? Paul Giamatti had never contemplated such a question until he starred as a fictionalised version of himself in the deliciously dark new comedy film Cold Souls.

"But I still can't think of a goddamn thing that it would look like," says Giamatti, who you might best remember as wine geek Miles Raymond in 2004 road film Sideways. "Maybe it would look like an old shoe or something," he says from his New York home.

In fact, in the film, it turns out Paul Giamatti's soul is in the guise of a chick pea. Cold Souls is an absurd scenario, but somehow it still makes you think long and hard about your place in this world - and, of course, what your soul might look like.

The film follows Giamatti, a fretting and anxious actor, who decides to get his soul extracted, frozen and put into storage. However, things go awry when his soul gets traded into a Russian soul trafficking scheme and ends up in the body of a female soap opera star in St Petersburg. So Giamatti heads to Russia in a desperate bid to get his soul back. Giamatti has done this hall-of-mirrors stuff before on screen. In American Splendor he played cult comic book writer Harvey Pekar, often acting alongside the real Pekar.

Cold Souls director Sophie Barthes came up with the idea for her debut feature film following a dream. She was at a doctor's surgery, eccentric actor and director Woody Allen, and some other patients were there with her, and they each had a box containing their extracted souls. She then wrote the film with Giamatti, rather than Allen, in mind. "I met her at this film festival and she seemed like a very interesting woman and she told me the idea for the thing and I just thought it sounded really great - and the whole device of the soul machine was funny, and I also liked all the Russian stuff. But when she told me she'd written it with me in mind I didn't realise she'd written about a character with my name until I read the script," he says. It's an ambitious first feature film but Giamatti believes Barthes pulls it off because she has a fun imagination. "She has a dry, distinctive funny tone, which is a very tricky tone to maintain. The tone is absurd but it's very grounded and it all feels very real," he says.

"And I liked the completely mundane quality of it too. That makes it more absurd, and I like the fact I feel like it doesn't hit you over the head with all that metaphysical stuff. That stuff is in there but somehow without it being in your face."

It would be easy to dislike Giamatti's character. His fretting manifests in rudeness - at one point he tells his wife's friend to unplug her dying mother whose on life support - and his marriage deteriorates badly. "He's self absorbed to begin with and then he's even more self absorbed when his soul gets taken out that he just doesn't take other people in at all," he says. "He's just such a dick to people." However, as irritating as Giamatti can be there is a tenderness and touching side to him. Even though the character carries his name, Giamatti says he didn't feel like he was playing himself. "It's not totally me really. I always felt like I was playing a character. Maybe I managed to forget it was me," he says. "I don't know what the character would be if it was actually me. I don't think it would have been very interesting."

He also got the chance to go to Russia to shoot part of the film. "One of the great things when you make a movie on location like that is you end up seeing the real city, more than any tourist ever does. We were going into huge Stalin-era apartment blocks and housing projects with 16 people living in tiny rooms. "It's still rough and rugged living over there. It's more of another planet than you ever think it is going to be - and more out there."

In Russia things start to heat up, and Giamatti's unease increases. There is a key scene where he is desperate to get his soul back so confronts the Russian gangster who is in charge of the soul racket. It's here your faith in Giamatti is restored when he stands tough, and even though he doesn't get what he's come for, he refuses to give up. Giamatti is steadily becoming one of those recognisable film faces - not of the handsome variety, but more on the eccentric character actor side.

He's more than happy with his lot and having the freedom to flit between small budget movies like Cold Souls and bigger budget films.

"I never imagined myself being in the position I'm in now. It could end tomorrow and I would feel like I'd achieved way more than I ever thought I would as an actor. "I'm now at a point well beyond anything I conceived being able to do, like pick roles that I like. "That's way more than I ever imagined it was going to be."

Lowdown

Who: Paul Giamatti, actor
What: Cold Souls, opens January 14.
Past roles: American Splendor (2003); Sideways (2004); Cinderella Man (2005)