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