Kinnear steering a path to success

Kinnear as the overbearing dad in Little Miss Sunshine

Doing all the driving in road movie Little Miss Sunshine had its challenges for Greg Kinnear. One part of his brain was on staying in character - that of Richard Hoover, the overbearing dad and wannabe motivational speaker steering his family in a dodgy VW Kombi from New Mexico to California - while the other had to keep an eye on the highway.

"It was very hot and there was some real technical stuff for me because I was driving in all of that and I was terrified we were going to kill someone," he chuckles down the line from Sydney. A camera truck would drive at 100km/h in front of him with a camera in his face and he'd be expected to act.

"I was terrified but ultimately I got pretty good at it. I'm working for my stunt driver's card right now."

The offbeat comedy has already proved a word-of-mouth hit in the United States, making more than $US50 million ($75 million), having been made for $US8 million.

It also stars Toni Collette as his stoic wife and Steve Carrell as his intellectual but troubled brother-in-law who goes along for the ride as they take wee Olive to the finals of a pre-teen beauty contest in Los Angeles.

Alan Arkin plays the grandfather, a man of dubious drug and reading habits. But it's Kinnear's Richard who is the most intriguingly unlikeable character of the bunch and it took a while for the actor to adjust to the idea.

"I was mortified. First time I watched the movie I was sort of halfway through thinking, 'Well that's pretty much the end of my career'."

But by the end Richard does locate a thread of humanity and some redeeming features. Producer Peter Saraf says: "Greg is uniquely able to bring real likeability to even the most unlikeable characters so he was perfect for Richard."

No stranger to being part of Hollywood films of bigger hype factor, Kinnear says he's finding the film's sleeper success gratifying.

"It really is nice to be part of a movie where the film just gets discovered and it's just about people wanting to go to a good movie."

Kinnear has another film out soon - he plays a burger chain executive investigating the quality of the company's raw ingredients in Richard Linklater's dramatisation of Eric Schlosser's American meat industry expose Fast Food Nation.

Kinnear is part of an even bigger ensemble than the vanload of Little Miss Sunshine and comes with a multi-narrative structure reminiscent of Traffic or Syriana.

He was attracted to Linklater's idea of adapting a book for drama rather than documentary and found his Burger King character's moral ambiguity intriguing.

"He's kind of the way everybody is in a way. Like, 'Hey you know I go about this work for someone and no we are not doing nice things but I've got a car payment due' ... There's no evil villain sitting up in the tower overlooking the whole scene of that movie."

It's a much different film than the satirical but ultimately heart-warming Little Miss Sunshine.

"Yeah I had a beer with Richard last night and he said, 'Congratulations - you are in the feel-good and feel-bad movies of the year'."

On screen

Who: Greg Kinnear, actor

Key roles: Sabrina (1995), As Good as It Gets (1997), Nurse Betty (2000), The Gift (2000) We Were Soldiers (2002), Auto Focus (2002), Stuck on You (2003), The Matador (2005)

Latest: Little Miss Sunshine (screening now), Fast Food Nation (opens Thursday)