Greg Kinnear Quotes

I like the classics!

Same job, whether it’s comedy or drama. Regardless of the weight of the role, I feel like the job is always kind of the same. Who is this person? What’s this guy here, and how is he playing with this thing, and what’s he trying to say? And what’s the volley with all these other people around him?

It’s not easy to tell a story about writers and make that feel like a complete story and an interesting story.

I’ve never had a clear road map. When things come along, I benefit.

I don’t consider a lot of actors that I really admire movie stars.

Talking about corporations – they’re so big. There’s not a person at a corporation.

I went door-to-door selling cable television subscriptions when I was in college. Not to date myself, but cable was just coming on. I had terrible territories, and they would give me $25, if I got somebody to let them come and just put the little cord in their house.

Whenever Hollywood gets involved with real life events, certain liberties have to be taken.

The irony is that you can’t use real rain to make movies.

Let’s keep the chemists over here and the food over here, that’s my feeling. What do I know? But that is a big aspect of fast food is their ability to artificially taint the colors and the smells and stuff to stimulate appetite.

You learn more about a person from the people around that person than you do from the person themselves. We all have our own ideas of who we are that may or may not be justified, and you can really find out a heck of a lot more accurately from the people around an individual.

The tragic element of a character is always intriguing I think.

In my sophomore year, a kid told me that the secret to getting women is to play really, really hard to get. I followed his advice, and I didn’t have so much as a date that year.

I like complicated characters.

I really don’t make a concerted effort to try to find a type of role. Maybe I’ve just done enough of them now where people are like, ‘Oh, it’s the guy that’s in a swirling vortex of despair, send it to Kinnear!’ I don’t really know, but it does seem to be a recurring theme.

I have always been interested in the concept of ruin.

When I look back on my childhood, I think of that short time in Beirut. I know that seeing the city collapse around me forced me to grasp something many people miss: the fragility of peace.

I was a halfback on an American football team in Athens, Greece – the Kississia Colts – where I went to high school, and we took the Cup my senior year. The downside, and somewhat unfortunate piece of information I have to pass on, is there were only two teams in the league because of the limited amount of Americans.

Audiences don’t ever disappoint me, in the sense that movies I feel really good about, they usually feel really good about too.

I can’t not find humor in elements of most parts of life, but at the same time nothing ever seems perpetually funny to me.

You don’t get to pick your partners in families; you get assigned a seat at the table.

A man always looks good in a dark suit.

There’s no harmony in most people in a way, and I’m attracted to it, and I think it makes for good storytelling.

There’s times when I’ll see a show, or something cooking on TV, and think, ‘That can really be fun when it’s working.’ But it’s a grind. I did that at NBC, it was five days a week. I was doing ‘Talk Soup‘ and ‘Later‘ at the same time. It’s a hard job, more difficult than people realize.

Well, I don’t know what image people have of me.

I really don’t make a concerted effort to try to find a type of role.

I was 12 when my parents told me we were moving to Lebanon. I remember thinking, ‘Leba-who?’ I had absolutely no concept of the place.

Here’s the thing about movies, all movies end up on television. That’s their life. Whether you like it or not, I don’t care how much money you spend on it, or how big or broad the film is, or who the actors are in it, eventually it’s all coming out of the box.

The automotive corporations, including Ford, I think are in the business of trying to make cars that people will drive.

If you’re working on a movie, you want it to be projected on the largest tapestry possible, and the sound to be perfect, and for that kind of communal experience of the movies to take place for it.

Everybody‘s family has problems.

I’m very leery of show business, having been in Los Angeles for the last 10 years. Buzz is a dangerous thing that I’ve heard applied to a lot of people that I’ve since not heard of again.

I’ve always thought Mexico City was incredibly dynamic.

I have a very well organized closet.

Good scripts and interesting stories are hard enough to find.