His Human Instinct

One of Greg Kinnear’s 1st TV gigs was a guest role in a 1991 episode of L.A. Law.

So one might be tempted to say that his first regular series role — as an L.A. lawyer in the Fox dramedy Rake — means he’s come full circle. Kinnear begs to differ.

“You have to understand,” he says. “That was a case of my agent calling and saying, ‘Hey, do you want to earn $422 to stand in a crowd and play a reporter?’ I was working as a host at Movietime [the precursor to E!] and earning about $422 a week at that point, so it was a no-brainer.”

The actor has never had a road map for his career. “I wish that sounded less stupid, but it’s true,” he confesses.

“Bob Costas [his predecessor as host of NBC’s Later] once told me he had a baseball card he’s been carrying around in his wallet since he was a kid, and it was always his dream to become one of the world’s greatest sportscasters. I wasn’t born with that gene.”

In fact, his early years taught him how to roll with life’s changes. “When you go from living in Logansport, Indiana, to Beirut, Lebanon, that prepares you for some pretty jarring transitions,” says Kinnear, whose diplomat dad moved his family from Hoosier country to the war-torn Middle East in 1975. “After that, going from hosting a talk show to doing movies — or from doing movies to starring in a TV series — doesn’t seem all that daunting.”

Still, it was an impressive leap from his Daytime Emmy–winning gig as host of E!’s Talk Soup to costarring in films directed by the likes of Sydney Pollack (Sabrina) and James L. Brooks (his Oscar-nominated turn in As Good As It Gets) in a few short years. “It was either a case of my own naïveté or my complete trust in those guys that I didn’t really question it,” he says. “And they proved to be pretty trustworthy.”

So has Kinnear, as he’s navigated movie roles both light (the dad of a young beauty-pageant contestant in Little Miss Sunshine) and dark (the ill-fated, sex-obsessed Hogan’s Heroes star Bob Crane in Auto Focus). In recent years, he’s earned Primetime Emmy nominations for diverse gigs: a guest role in the ABC comedy Modern Family and a star turn as JFK in the Reelz-Channel miniseries The Kennedys.

Now, in Rake (adapted from an Australian series), he plays self-destructive defense attorney Keegan Deane. What convinced him to take the role — and to serve as coexecutive producer? “I’ve been in a lot of serious dramas and some very hard-core comedy stuff, and I felt like this split the difference in a really honest way,” he says. “It’s able to negotiate two different tones, which is really hard to do.”

Of course, it helps to have Primetime Emmy winner Peter Tolan — who brilliantly merged comedy and tragedy for seven seasons in FX’s Rescue Me — as an executive producer.

“It’s about a guy who’s a screw-up, and it’s hard to get an audience’s sympathy for those kind of characters,” says Tolan, who worked with Kinnear on The Larry Sanders Show and on the movie What Planet Are You From? “So, if you have someone who already has some audience goodwill and a natural charm, that goes a long way to making it work. People think, ‘Oh, it’s Greg Kinnear. I like him, so he can kill a baby.’ Not that we’re going there….”

Even if they were, Kinnear would probably be up for it. “I don’t know why I’m attracted to playing these kinds of people, but I am,” he says of the character, who’s addicted to gambling and love, among other things. “He has his shortcomings and is very human in his need for self-improvement. But there’s a shred of hope running through the guy, too. There’s a quality about him that’s two steps forward, three steps back.”

Sounds like the guy needs a road map.
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Bruce Fretts is articles editor of TV Guide magazine.

Originally published Emmy® magazine issue 12-2013.