“When I look back on my childhood, I think of that short time in Beirut...” — Greg Kinnear Quote

When I look back on my childhood, I think of that short time in Beirut. I know that seeing the city collapse around me forced me to grasp something many people miss: the fragility of peace.

I have always been interested in the concept of ruin.

There's times when I'll see a show, or something cooking on TV, and think, 'That can really be fun when it's working.' But it's a grind. I did that at NBC, it was five days a week. I was doing 'Talk Soup' and 'Later' at the same time. It's a hard job, more difficult than people realize.

I really don't make a concerted effort to try to find a type of role. Maybe I've just done enough of them now where people are like, 'Oh, it's the guy that's in a swirling vortex of despair, send it to Kinnear!' I don't really know, but it does seem to be a recurring theme.

Beirut turned into a war zone in a matter of hours. We were stuck at home, the roads were blocked.

You can learn all about the human condition from covering the crime beat in a big city - you don't need to go to Beirut for that - but a foreign correspondent begins to understand poverty from a different perspective.

When I go to Beirut, I don't drive. It's traumatizing to drive there.

I was actually lost in Beirut on the way home.

Growing up in Beirut, I used to go to the souks with my mother to buy fabrics... I understood fashion at an early age, and my first designs were when I was five.