Greg Kinnear, that glib, funny, attractive young man on Talk Soup-the one several years ago, we mean. He graduated to a late night talk show of his own. Then suddenly he was starring in Sabrina with Harrison Ford. It seemed he was living a charmed life, until the thud of Sabrina and the much harder fall of two films in which Kinnear starred-Dear God and A Smile Like Yours. Having been a fan of Kinnear's for some time, we hope this film is the one that proves he has the chops to really be an actor.

Kinnear loved the script from the first reading and playing a gay character was not the slightest hurdle - it was more important for him to learn to be a fine visual artist.

"The open purple shirt may not have escaped you," he laughs, "It was always a difficult aspect of the movie. We were always trying to figure out what the tone was. It was a kind of anguishing process of everybody kind of butting heads and figuring out who each other were.

"In New York, I worked with Billy Sullivan, a great artist who works in Soho. He is a wonderful painter and really kind of educated me on the art world. He is gay as well. He was just so wonderful in giving me an overview of what all of this was about. It was all about finding whatever that line was."

Once he learned about being an artist, he worked on the sexuality. "I had seen The Birdcage, a wonderful movie, but I have worked with gay people and I have gay friends and I have no reference for that kind of extremeness in the character. For me it was never going to be that. At the same time we didn't want to totally make Simon feel like a heterosexual. So it was finding that rhythm the whole time. The great thing was this movie, unlike The Birdcage or In and Out, was not really about the character being gay. It has to do with people just interacting and humanity and decency. I thought that first and foremost, this character was just a decent human being. That he was gay was secondary to that."

Kinnear is young enough and a good enough person to still find awe in what he does for a living. In this project a good deal of that awe is spent on Jack Nicholson.

"The man simply has more charisma than most of us are blessed with. He really has this larger than life charisma that can suck energy out of a room. Yet he is such a fair and generous actor that when he is working with you-and I don't think he knows how good he is-you feel him doing everything he can to make you as good as you can be. Re wants you to be as good as you can be in the scene and will do everything he can to secure that. That is such a wonderful quality.

"At the same time he's just very unpredictable. Jim is big on lots of takes, enjoys getting various performances. That's great for me. But all of us eventually fall into a sameness. But Jack is like a musical instrument that has just a lot more keys on it than most. Everything is different and it always feels fresh and always feels unpredictable and new."

Kinnear confesses some concern about the fast fades of his last two starring vehicles. "I wasn't happy. I would have liked them to perform better. I'd like this to perform well. There was no point where I started any project and said, 'Well I am going to do this movie, but it is going to suck.'

"But I do think the great thing is that I learned quite a bit at that time. You learn from mistakes. Yet there is a lot I wouldn't change at all. Garry Marshall is one of the greatest guys I have ever met and I wouldn't change working with him for a moment.

But all of his previous films were done during breaks from his television hosting responsibilities, which kept him from being totally intent on the movie business. Now he is able to concentrate solely on being a film actor.

"All the other films I've worked on up until now I was a talk-snow host first. I was under NBC contract and they were not anxious to dismiss me of my duties. So I had a schedule where I'd go in and do that year round and whatever slots I had open up we'd try to stick in a movie. It was just about as horrible a working condition as I could have asked for. Thankfully they were great at letting me go early from my contract at the beginning of this movie. So I am officially a free agent. I feel good about it."

Additionally he learned about real acting on this set. When his character is attacked by several street hustlers, Kinnear found make-up to be a great actor's tool.

"Early on in terms of the character I was doing everything I could to make Simon look beautiful. Then in the later scenes to make him appear as horrible. The trauma that he suffers is enormous and it is pivotal in the movie. He kind of loses his vanity and so much of his life is gone at that moment. I think back to all of Jim's movies and I don't think he had a lot of fight scenes. Not a lot of explosions in those Jim Brooks films. So I knew that whatever violence there was in terms of the beating it would not be Scorsese-like, but have to be reflected more in the sort of post-trauma.

"The make-up helped more than I ever thought. And I have heard actors say that. As a talk-show host I just thought it was so silly. But I am telling you It is remarkable. They put this stuff on me and I had a prosthetic eye. I didn't really want to look at myself in the make-up chair. So when I actually look in the mirror, it was one of the first times I'd seen myself like that and it was very helpful. When I saw myself like tha