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While Paul Giamatti spent the early 90s building a solid CV of anonymous roles in big-budget films -- not unlike Jason Alexander, back in the day -- it was not until the icy winter of 1997 that he turned in his first showstopping performance. That's right: in the Howard Stern biopic Private Parts, Paul Giamatti played Kenny Rushton, better known as Pig Vomit. When Fametracker saw the movie, we were sure this was a star-making role -- the kind that vaults an actor from being Jason Alexander in Pretty Woman to being Jason Alexander on Seinfeld. Evidently, our prediction was incorrect.

The same year, he played an FBI technician in the modest cult hit Donnie Brasco, but since then has opted for less showy roles -- the nameless bellboy who smokes a cigarette with Julia Roberts in My Best Friend's Wedding; the control room supervisor in The Truman Show; a soldier in Saving Private Ryan. In the HBO original movie Winchell, he starred opposite fellow well-respected character actor Stanley Tucci, which is all well and good, but who ever got famous from a supporting role in an HBO movie -- even a good one? Elizabeth Mitchell? Vondie Curtis-Hall? Al Waxman?

Giamatti is currently shooting Man on the Moon, another biopic, this time starring Jim Carrey as the late comedian Andy Kaufman. Fametracker always enjoys Giamatti's likable, shambling screen presence and is hoping this role will catapult him into Tommy Lee Jones territory.