the christmas break -- giamatti's hunham, a troubled student played by dominic sessa, and the school's cafeteria manager, a grievinge son died in vietnam, played by da'vine joy randolph, herself a golden globe winner and best supporting actress nominee. >> can we say it's his birthday? jeffrey: it's brilliant ensemble acting and, for giamatti, the very essence of his profession. >> it's interesting, the whole idea of sort of chemistry, because people often ask actors like how is it that you find this chemistry? and i actually just think it's at bottom, it's my job. it's my job to get along with other people. it's my job to engage. jeffrey: you mean in a staged, theatrical sense. >> yes. but, it's my job to find something that i connect with these people and then can do it. it really seems at bottom mostly what i do, is to try to find chemistry. and sometimes, you have to fake it and it'll still, if you're good at it, it'll still look like it works. cant stand him. but then, most of the time, you have something like this where we all just melded and it was really nice and we had that magical thing just happening any