With his latest movie, "Feast of Love," opening nationwide today, I asked Greg to reflect a bit on the past decade that has seen him get an Oscar nomination for "As Good As It Gets" and act in such films as "Little Miss Sunshine," "The Matador," "Auto Focus," "Dinner With Friends," "We Were Soldiers," "Nurse Betty," and the hilarious "Stuck On You."
He had made his name in the first part of the 90s as the original host of "Talk Soup" then went over to NBC to host "Later With Greg Kinnear," taking over for Bob Costas. When I told Greg that I used to catch him on "Later" quite often, he said, "It was the smokers and the tokers at that hour." (I'm neither btw). It was while doing that show, now hosted by Carson Daly, that Kinnear was cast in the William Holden role in the 1995 remake of "Sabrina."
Since then, he's done film after film after film.
"I've had different incarnations in the business," he says. "I used to be doing marketing for a low-budget film company trying to get out posters for "Assault of the Killer Bimbos" and now, to be talking about "Feast of Love." It's metaphorically like the movie. The movie looks at love from a lot of different angles and my career has kind of looked at the entertainment business from a lot of different angles. I still feel the same way I felt when I started: I care about what I do and I try to work as hard as I can but woefully under-prepared, always, and overwhelmed by all that I don't know on a regular basis. So, in that way it's exactly the same."