Racious, self deprecating, effusively friendly--these are not the traits one might expect to find in Greg Kinnear, the quick-witted master of caustic humor and subtext-conveying facial expressions of TV's "Talk Soup" and "Later With Greg Kinnear" fame. Especially now that he's become a bona-fide star, thanks to his acclaimed turn in Paramount's comedy "Sabrina," one would think this too-handsome charmer would have something of a swelled head. Quite the contrary. "Do you need anything?" he asks with concern pre-interview. "You have some delicious water there. I've got more water if you want it! Or, for emergencies, [he produces a bottle of beer from his mini-fridge]. So you just tell me. We'll see how the interview goes. More people than you know have had to dip into the bottle when they're talking to me."
His deadpan delivery is belied by an impossibly perfect but genuine grin and an aura of clever, affable playfulness. These qualities exuded through the screen when Kinnear played "Sabrina's" dashing playboy David Larrabee, a fun-loving ladies' man who ends up having more substance and integrity than he's given credit for. His exuberant performance has won him both BOXOFFICE's Barometer Star Poll as Most Promising Male Newcomer, and NATO/Sho-West's Star of Tomorrow honor, despite the film's less-than-stellar boxoffice performance. In making their decision, exhibitors obviously looked beyond the grosses and focused on Kinnear's personal potential.
"It's so fun," says 32-year-old Kinnear of his recognition by the exhibition industry. "It was a completely unexpected piece of news, because I really feel like an outsider, as far as the film world. All the people that I worked with in the film made me feel as welcome as they could. And then to have the people who actually show the movies give me that kind of notice is great. It made me feel welcome to a business that has a shroud of mystery around it. I was very stunned at the news, and happy. It wasn't like a $200 million movie or something like that, and I just always thought that to ever get any sort of notice, that's the kind of success the film you're involved with would have had to enjoy. I think that's very refreshing. I thought it was all about business and numbers and stuff. So that's nice. I'm still amazed. It's great."
Kinnear's career in the entertainment field began in high school. The son of a State Department employee, he grew up in Logansport, Indiana; Washington, D.C; Athens, Greece; and Beirut, Lebanon. While attending school in Europe, he did a radio show and many stage performances. "I really had an interest at an early age in some sort of media-related thing," says Kinnear. "I didn't know what it was exactly. Couldn't quite put my finger on it. Radio, acting, something." When he enrolled at the University of Arizona in the early '80s, he started as a drama major in the theatre department. "I did that for about a year and a half. But at some point, in a very casual sort of way, one of the professors mentioned in one of the classes one uneventful afternoon that most of the actors who work in the business aren't able to employ themselves by just acting," he laughs. "Whatever that figure is--about two percent of the actors actually earn their living being actors. To me, this was a very, very frightening statistic. And I suddenly thought, `Well, I just don't know about this anymore,' because unlike the character I play, David Larrabee, I'm not independently wealthy, and so I'm going to have to make a living."
Kinnear switched to broadcast journalism and ended up graduating with that degree. Just out of school, he worked briefly for a low-budget film company in the advertising department, until he got a break to audition for MTV as a VJ (Video Jockey.) "I didn't get a job, but I got a very nice looking little tape that said `MTV Audition' on it, Kinnear recounts. "I slipped that over to a cable channel that was starting up called Movietime. They were looking for hosts, and I thought, `I'll throw my name in the hat.' I thought it was my one big last bid for showbusiness. And I actually got called back and back and back, and ended up getting a job as the first host of Movietime, which eventually became the E! Channel."
Movietime launched in August of 1987, and existed for three years in that incarnation. "It was really a great training ground," says Kinnear. "It was improvisational, it was do anything to fill time. Didn't make any money--barely enough to get by. But it was a really good place to start. Then the HBO management came in and decided to change the name to E!, change the look of the channel--and change the hosts."
Following Kinnear's termination, he did an HBO international show and hosted Fox's `Best of the Worst' for about a season. "That was a look at the worst jobs people have, the worst inventions, the worst TV shows, which ours was one of, as it turns out. So it didn't last as long as I'd hoped."
As "Best of the Worst" was winding down, Kinnear's former E! cohorts contacted him and asked if he'd like to be the host of "Talk Soup," a new show they were thinking of producing which would examine talk show segments. At first, Kinnear turned them down, because the original idea was that "Talk Soup" would be a serious look at talk shows. "Please! Count me out!" Kinnear exclaims at the thought. "I'm not exactly a big fan of daytime talk shows." But then E! became open to turning it into a comedy show and having fun with it. Talk Soup with Kinnear as its host debuted in December of 1991.
Kinnear's growing fame soon won him the host position on NBC's late-night talk show "Later" when former host Bob Costas left the program. He took the reins in March of 1994, while still hosting "Talk Soup" simultaneously. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Kinnear, his "Soup" stint had also won him the attention of a world-renowned film director. In the midst of [juggling two shows at once], I got a phone call from Sydney Pollack's office saying he would like to meet with me. And I was quite confused about that. I didn't know really what it was about. I was told by my agent it was a `project.' A project. That could mean cleaning his office, for all I knew, or mowing the lawn in front of [Pollack's production company] or something. But it was a project, so it sounded interesting enough for me to meet with him. And I'm a big fan of Sydney Pollack's, too. So for once in my life, I didn't ask any questions. I just went down, and he told me about this movie, `Sabrina,' and told me about the part of David Larrabee, and asked if I was interested. And I said `Well, yeah!' And we started reading right there at his desk.
"After the screen test, I didn't hear anything for about two and a half months. And I just kind of thought, `That was it. It went well, what a shot, boy wouldn't that have been neat.' And then right before Christmas of last year, I got a phone call saying `Congratulations. You're going to play David Larrabee.' Coincidentally, my contract on `Talk Soup' was over. And it couldn't have come really at a better time, because I felt like we had done everything we could do with the show. It had gone from being kind of bizarre-funny to just kind of bizarre-scary. So it was a good time to pull out."
Despite having only minimal acting experience, Kinnear found it fairly easy to transform into David Larrabee, thanks to regular exposure to such characters in everyday life. "David is basically a playboy who's never worked a day in his life who comes from obscene wealth and is just ever so slightly on the shallow end, and one need only drive around Beverly Hills for probably a half hour to come in contact with about a half-dozen of these bozos driving their Ferraris. Living in L.A. was all the research I needed for this particular guy. In terms of actually doing a De Niro and moving into the Kennedy compound for a couple of weeks, I didn't do it."
Kinnear was able to record several weeks' worth of "Later" episodes in advance in order to accommodate the schedule for "Sabrina." During his next hiatus, Kinnear will take the lead in Paramount's Garry Marshall-directed comedy "Dear God." "I think it's a great premise, and a good script, and I'm a big fan of Garry Marshall's," says Kinnear. The film is about a con-man who is given the choice of going to jail or getting a job, and he reluctantly chooses the job option. He becomes a postal worker assigned to the dead letter office, and he and his oddball co-workers begin answering undeliverable mail addressed to personages such as God, Elvis Presley, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. When his responses help make some dreams come true, the media tries to seek out this supposed miracle worker--as do the postal author ities, who want to charge him with mail fraud. "But there's a happy ending, very Frank Capra-esque," assures Kinnear. Kinnear has also been named in connection with the Julia Roberts starrer "My Best Friend's Wedding," the Steve Oedekerk-scripted "Nothing to Lose" and James L. Brooks' "Old Friends," but at press time, nothing had been signed.
"I'm pretty happy with my career at this point," says Kinnear. "I've been very lucky, and I don't think I'd change really anything. I've had great experiences since I've been out here. I've been incredibly pleased with how things have moved along." But has he suffered any disappointments in his new thespian career? "I was disappointed that I didn't get the part of Sabrina," he admits facetiously. "That was the only thing that I would change. But apparently they wanted a woman for the role, he complains with a jesting bitterness."
Another avenue Kinnear might pursue in the future is writing, having had experience scripting sketches for "Talk Soup" and "Later." "Whether I can do it in any sort of cohesive and interesting way in context of a story, I don't know at this point. I have incredible respect for people who are successful in writing interesting film scripts. It really is a tricky thing to do. Or at least to do well. And I wouldn't want to do it any other way than well." He has some ideas, which he dismisses as "probably the same old dumb-ass ideas they've been floating around for years. Probably nothing too unique."
Whether Kinnear defies the equally frightening statistic of writers who successfully earn their living at their trade remains to be seen, but not to worry; with his new star status, he'll be too busy acting in other people's scripts for a while to come.