Greg Kinnear: Golden Boy?

"Well, now I work in the twilight hours in television, and you know what Tom Snyder said: 'You get the tokers and the smokers at that hour.' So those people may have some idea who I am."

"Do you stay up till 1:35 in the morning to watch your show?"

Kinnear shakes his head. "Very, very infrequently. I have a satellite dish, so I watch the feed that we get when it airs at 1:30 in New York, when it's 10:30 here in California. But to actually stay up till 1:30 in the morning, what are you, out of your mind?"

"I stayed up last night to watch." I confess. "Harry Shearer was the guest. I really like him, but truthfully, in order for me to stay up that late and be happy, Harry would have had to come through the TV and suck my toes or something."

"That's a great idea. Why didn't I think of that? The guests go out and have sex with the viewers! Martha, we're gonna make a million bucks off this idea."

"Sure, you'll make the million and you'll probably forget my name. Speaking of big bucks, how much money do you have in your wallet?"

"Right now?" Kinnear asks. "Probably $15."

"Can I see?"

"You want me to take out my wallet and show you?" he asks. I nod. Kinnear obliges.

"Oh, wait. I have a couple of ones, so that makes an even $17."

"Is that what you normally carry?" I ask.

"No, I'm a little low right now, a little tapped out. I would think your readers will be fascinated by that little tidbit, by the way."

"Hey, if Hugh Grant had a couple more bucks on him, he might not have become the laughing stock of the Western world. So we're interested."

Kinnear just rolls his eyes. I say, "I know you were brought up in Greece."

"I was born in Indiana," he replies. "My father was with the State Department in Washington, D.C. We lived in Reston, Virginia, for about three years. And then he got his first diplomatic assignment, to the American Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1975, no less, which was the year that the war broke out. So we were there for about nine months."

"What was that like?"

"When we first got there it was great, and then it just gradually deteriorated and by the end of our time there I would wake up invariably to the sound of shelling and machine-gun fire. I was about 12 or 13. I'd be in a daze and just walk out to the living room, and there's my family, mom and dad, my brother, sitting there listening to the BBC radio broadcast, as the opera of machine-gun fire is going on around our house. It was just bizarre."

"Were you frightened?" I ask.

"Now I'd be the biggest basket case in a situation like that, being in a war zone, but at that age, I thought it was great. Every time the shelling came close, I was near euphoria. But the reason they listened to the BBC was because that's where we would get the information that would tell us where and when to go in the event of an evacuation."

"In code?"

"Yes. One night they woke me up at three in the morning, and my mom said, 'We're going now.' And we head-ed off to this hotel where we met up with three or four hundred other Americans. At the hotel, there was this news camera and I kept trying to jump in front of it and get on the evening news with Tom Brokaw."

"Your first longing for fame?"

"May be those were my early, early yearnings for the camera." he says. "We were loaded in buses and taken to the airport through the PLO camp, where we were stopped by a tank. That was a very frightening moment. We got evacuated to Greece, and my dad was reassigned to the American Embassy in Athens. We were there for seven years, that's where I ended up finishing high school."

"Were you a cutup in school? Did you act out to get laughs?"

"No, not at all. I was on the debating team and stuff. In fact, it was great being in Athens, because they had these events--debate, duet acting, oral interpretations, whatever--the key was to somehow be in the performing arts world, because that ultimately equaled trips to faraway places like Cairo or London. Then I went to school at the University of Arizona, and then I came out here to California about 10 years ago. And I guess that about sums it up." Kinnear sits back, looking mighty pleased with himself.

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