Greg Kinnear sat "scared out of my shorts" in Jack Nicholson's living room months ago as Nicholson huddled with director James Brooks about scenes they'd read from As Good As It Gets.
This week, the actors won best actor and best supporting actor awards from the National Board of Review, often an Oscar predictor, and the movie ranks second in the board's tope 10 (after LA Confidential.)
Kinnear admits he never dreamed of this in his Talk Soup days of after his break-out Sabrina (followed by tow forgettable movies.) His reaction is "in the higher echelons" of excitement, he drawled on the phone from LA Wednesday.
He figured he had the role of gay artist in Good when Nicholson said after the huddle, "Are you hungry? Would you like some spaghetti and meatballs?" Kinnear does a mean Nicholson imitation; when he screams at a dog in As Good As It Gets, he's doing a Nicholson scream, he says.
They had yet to connect on the phone about their wins when we spoke, but they've developed a relationship; "He drags me onto the golf course now and then. He tolerates my mediocre game, the sign of the ultimate decent man."
In the movie, Nicholson's obsessive romance novelist is racist, sexist and homophobic and screams a lot at Kinnear's artist. To be on the receiving end of Jack's "loathsomely troubled" character was tough to deal with, Kinnear says.
Kinnear, 33, will celebrate with fiancée Helen Labdon, 28. "We could be moving in that directions," he says of marriage.
The ideal Christmas gift for Kinnear would be "a dog as enchanting as Verdell," his pet in As Good As It Gets. "Helen and I have talked about getting a dog for a while." But it would be another breed; tiny Verdell is a rare Brussels Griffon, and "it fits into that poodle category. I don't think I could do that."