10 Movie Secrets They Didn't Want You To Know
2. How Paul Giamatti's Lazy Eye Was Achieved - The Holdovers
Paul Giamatti gives one of the finest performances of his career in Alexander Payne's Oscar-nominated dramedy The Holdovers, and one of the major traits of his protagonist Paul Hunham, apart from stinking of fish, is that he has a lazy eye.
Now, Giamatti himself doesn't have a lazy eye, leaving audiences to ponder precisely how the trick was pulled off.
While it was simply a case of deducing whether the lazy eye was a practical effect or added digitally in post-production, both Giamatti and Payne refused to reveal the truth during the movie's original press tour.
In an interview with People last December, Giamatti flat-out stated that Payne wouldn't allow him to reveal how the effect was pulled off, calling it a "state secret," and vaguely referring to it as "movie magic."
Yet in recent weeks, with Oscar season nearing its end and everyone desperate to keep their nominated movies in the PR cycle, Giamatti finally dropped the veil.
In a Howard Stern interview, Giamatti finally put the matter to rest, confirming that he wore a "big, soft contact lens" which left him mostly blind in one eye, as proved particularly difficult when shooting scenes where he was required to drive a car. Finally, there it is.