GREG KINNEAR is currently considered the luckiest man in Hollywood. He first became nationally known as the host of E! Entertainment Television's Talk Soup, then succeeded Bob Costas as the host of NBC's Later. Somehow, he managed to parlay that small amount of notoriety into an audition for the part of Harrison Ford's brother in Sabrina, the remake of the Billy Wilder classic that starred Humphrey Bogart, William Holden, and Audrey Hepburn.
He was, needless to say, thrilled when he learned he had won the role. ("It was amazing, finding out I'd get to play a full-time, tried-and-true playboy who drives red Ferraris and wears white tuxedos and drinks Champagne--all the things I would never do in my own life.")
He is not quite sure why director Sydney Pollack decided to go with an inexperienced actor and relative unknown. He says he is pretty sure he has nothing in common with Audrey Hepburn. ("I can't put my finger on one damn thing. Actually, I think we may have the same foot size.")
He has nothing new to say about co-star Ford, but he says that Julia Ormond, who plays the Hepburn role, is an exceptional pool player. ("There is a billiard table in one of the rooms of the house we were shooting in and she would call me down there every night before we actually started shooting for a good ass-whipping. It became a ritual.")
He has given many interviews to promote the film and his new career. He says that if he had to interview himself, he would have no idea what to ask. ("I would hate to interview me, and I wouldn't know what to say to me if me were asking me questions.")
He was born on June 17, 1963, in Logansport, Indiana. ("I have a copy of the Logansport newspaper for June 17, 1963, and the headline was that the Supreme Court had banned school prayer. So a spiritual thing happened.")
He lived in Hoosierland until he was nine. Thereafter, his father's State Department job took the family to Washington, D.C., and then overseas. His mother was a full-time homemaker. He says he was a peaceful youth, although he remembers one occasion when he was forced to defend his honor. ("There were these little berries that would fall off this tree, and this guy was slowly collecting them and throwing them at me for no apparent reason. And at some point I just snapped and we went fisticuffs and it was a nasty row. He never did it again, but did I win? No.")
He spent his adolescent years in Beirut, then moved to Greece when civil war broke out in Lebanon. He went to high school at an American school in Athens. ("It was pretty great. To celebrate my senior prom watching the sun come up on the Acropolis with my date, that is one of the best things that ever happened to me.")
He was an average student and athlete, but participated in forensics--debate and acting--for ulterior motives. ("One learned really quickly that it invariably led to trips to other American schools, in places like Rome and Cairo, and there would be much debauchery on these trips.")
He returned to the United States after high school and earned a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Arizona. He moved to Los Angeles after graduation and got a job in the marketing department of Empire Pictures, working on the ad campaigns for Space Sluts in the Slammer and the sequels to Ghoulies.
Growing up, he was never very comfortable around girls. He says he was never a very good dancer. ("And I have hundreds of women who will back me up on this. In high school I was not very good. In college I was still not very good. And when this movie came around, I was barely tolerable.")
He is not married, but he does have a girlfriend. ("She's my full-time shrink. She's taking some classes in college.") His average day has little of the glamour one associates with movie-star life. ("I wake up, same as everybody else, at two or three in the afternoon. I do the show at about six-thirty, get back around eight-thirty, have dinner. Nothing too exciting, it's really boring. In fact, it's pathetic.")
He recently bought a Macintosh laptop, but he doesn't know that much about computers. ("Whenever I try to get on the Internet I can't get on, and when I do, I can't get off. I'm like a bad driver on the freeway.") He enjoys reading spy books, especially Ken Follett novels. ("Periodicals for me are like cable television: I just flip. I have no loyalty to any particular one. I'll read People one week and Time magazine the next.")
His favorite bagel is sesame seed. He eats chicken and fish regularly. ("I'm not a vegetarian, and I love a good steak every now and then, but I just have a feeling that it's not very good for you.")
He wears boxers to bed. ("It's one of those beds that has a mattress and blankets--pretty radical.")