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 With the handsome looks and winning
sarcasm that befit a late-night television talk show host, it is no surprise
that Greg Kinnear first shot to stardom as the host of the E! channel's
Talk Soup. More surprising, and thus more impressive, has been Kinnear's
success in making the leap from television to the big screen. With only
his fourth major celluloid outing, As Good As It Gets, Kinnear scored
his first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, effectively establishing
himself as someone whose scope included screens small and large. Born June 17, 1963, in Longsport, IN, as the youngest of three sons, Kinnear led a peripatetic childhood. His father was a Foreign Services diplomat for the State Department and his family accompanied him to places as far-flung as Beirut and Athens. While a student in Athens, Kinnear first ventured into the role of talk show host with his radio show School Daze With Greg Kinnear. Returning to the States for a college education, Kinnear attended the University of Arizona in Tucson, where he graduated in 1985, with a degree in broadcast journalism. From Arizona, he headed out to Los Angeles, where he landed his first job as a marketing assistant with Empire Entertainment. It was there that Kinnear got his first taste of show business, creating promotional campaigns for such films as Space Sluts in the Slammer. Following this stint, Kinnear found a job with the Movietime cable channel. Using an audition tape from a failed attempt at an MTV VJ position, Kinnear became a host and on-location reporter for the channel. All went swimmingly until he was fired, when Movietime became the E! Entertainment Network, and Kinnear soon found himself taking bit parts on such television shows as L.A. Law and Life Goes On. However, his luck began to change when he became the creator, co-executive producer, and host of Best of the Worst, which aired from 1990 to 1991. In a more ironic and satisfying twist of fate, Kinnear was then hired back by E! to host Talk Soup, the network's new talk show. The show proved to be hugely popular and Kinnear acted as its host and eventual executive producer until 1994, when he left the show for the NBC late-night talk show Later With Greg Kinnear. It was also in 1994 that he had his first big screen role, as -- wait for it -- a talk show host in the Damon Wayans comedy Blankman. In 1995, he snared the part that was to give him more prominence among film audiences, that of the irresponsible David Larrabee in Sydney Pollack's remake of Billy Wilder's 1954 classic romance Sabrina. The film was less than a success, but it did nothing to prevent Kinnear from getting the lead role in the 1996 comedy Dear God. That film, too, had a somewhat unfortunate fate, but Kinnear (now resigned from Later) more than rebounded with his next effort, James L. Brooks' As Good As It Gets (1997). The film was an unqualified hit, netting seven Oscar nominations and winning two, a Best Actor for Jack Nicholson and a Best Actress for Helen Hunt. Kinnear himself had the honor of both a Best Supporting Actor nomination and a Golden Globe nomination. Kinnear's next film, the romantic comedy A Smile
Like Yours, had him starring opposite Lauren Holly as one half of a couple
trying to have a baby. The film met with lukewarm reviews and a fairly
anemic box-office results, but Kinnear's subsequent film, 1998's You've
Got Mail, struck gold. He played Meg Ryan's significant other, a newspaper
columnist wholly unlike what was to be his next character, that of Captain
Amazing in the 1999 summer action film Mystery Men. With a stellar cast,
including Ben Stiller, William H. Macy, Janeane Garofalo, Lena Olin, and
Tom Waits, Kinnear was indeed in good company, further proof of how far
he had come in a short amount of time. ~ Rebecca Flint, All Movie Guide
Stuck On You (2004) **DISCLAIMER: Most of this material was obtained through search engines If anyone discovers that anything on this site is copyrighted, please notify me, and I will remove it immediately. |
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