Greg Johnson: from stand-up comic to award-winning actor...

Interview – 2012

Actor Greg Johnson began his career as a stand-up comedian. His first acting role was in movie The End of the Golden Weather. Since then, he has appeared in a wide range of TV shows, films and adverts, from Outrageous Fortune to capsized trimaran tale Abandoned. He has won acting awards for TV series City Life, and movie The Insatiable Moon.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Johnson talks about:

Learning to act by watching rehearsals of The End of the Golden Weather
Trying not to be funny on Shortland Street
How the fast-paced nature of the show enhanced his skill
Having fun on Street Legal with the show’s star Jay Laga’aia
Playing it cool with Holly Hunter while filming The Piano
Teasing Anthony Hopkins on the set of The World’s Fastest Indian
Finding an odd way of speaking for his character in Outrageous Fortune
Creating a strong backstory for his award-winning role in The Insatiable Moon
Being conned into wearing a wig on Go Girls

This video was first uploaded on 11 June 2012, and is available under this Creative Commons licence. This licence is limited to use of ScreenTalk interview footage only and does not apply to any video content and photographs from films, television, music videos, web series and commercials used in the interview.

Interview, Camera and Editing – Andrew Whiteside

The character that I did on Shortland Street, Dean Cochrane . . . well I don’t think he was as funny as me. And so I had to . . . pull back the comedy a bit, which is quite hard to do when you can tell that if a line was said this way, it would be quite funny. But that wasn't really my job to do that...
– Greg Johnston on suppressing his comedic instincts for the role of ex-con Dean Cochrane on Shortland Street

Greg's Full Profile