Greg Joseph movie list
Gregory Nelson "Greg" Joseph has excelled in two highly competitive fields: as writer, Hollywood biographer and former journalist and critic who counts a Pulitzer Prize among his achievements, and as an actor honored with a prestigious Hollywood acting award whose work also has been recognized in Cannes and New York.
The tall (six-foot-two-and-a-half), lean and angular actor, known for his many looks and ability to change his appearance to fit a wide range of characters in a variety of genres, stars as a military veteran in a romantic drama named an Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival Short Film Corner ("The Last Dance"), won Best of Festival character acting honors at the Hollywood Shockfest Film Festival for re-creating an iconic horror favorite ("Ritual"), has the lead as a polygamist cult leader in a film à clef that won Best Ensemble Acting at the New York First Run Film Festival and a National Board of Review Commendation ("When the Dogs Cried Out"), was nominated as Best Lead Actor at the Show Low International Film Festival for his portrayal of a deadly Middle East sentencing judge ("Zarin"), stars as a fanatical collector, the film's sole onscreen character, in a thriller chosen as an Official Selection of the Phoenix Film Festival ("Detector"), and stars as a washed up ventriloquist in a two-character drama that won Best of Fest honors at the Southern Arizona Independent Film Festival and was a top winner at the Broadcast Education Association (BEA) Festival of Media Arts ("The Amazing Mortimer").
Other recent portrayals include The Soulless Gunfighter opposite Danny Trejo and Bill Engvall in the Western satire "Cowboy Dreams," the co-starring role of the veteran astronaut in the science fiction TV series "H.O.P.E.," the pivotal part of the lead attorney in the environmental feature film "Poison Sky" with Kevin Sorbo ("Hercules: The Legendary Journeys," "Andromeda"), and the role of the minister in the feature film "Switched for Inheritance" (also titled "Room for Rent") starring scream queen Lin Shaye ("A Nightmare on Elm Street," "Critters," the "Insidious" film series).
Greg made his big screen debut in an auspicious way _ co-starring opposite Michael Douglas in the major feature "Adam at Six A.M.," which was produced by screen legend Steve McQueen ("Bullitt") and has since gone on to achieve cult status.
He was nominated for the 2015 Governor's Arts Award, an honor described as "the most prestigious, recognizing excellence in artistic expression and outstanding contributions to the arts community," as well as for the 2016 Filmstock Film Festival Barry E. Wallace Citizenship Award, for "those that promote encouragement and positive influences in their film community."
He continues to hone his craft, most recently studying improvisation with Oscar-winner Alan Arkin ("Little Miss Sunshine"), a founding member of Second City.
In April 2019, he appeared on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) with host Ben Mankiewicz as a guest programmer as part of the cable channel's silver anniversary after winning a national contest as one of the country's top 25 "super classic movie fans," and was in a number of promotional spots marking the occasion.
Greg was born and reared in Kansas City, Missouri, the only child of Theodore Joseph, a jeweler who as a young man dreamed of leaving his native Cleveland to go to Hollywood and become an actor himself, and Marcella (Nelson) Joseph, an artist and graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute who studied with the famous muralist Thomas Hart Benton, whose work adorns the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library.
He began acting at age 13 and went on to earn an honors degree in Drama from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he was nominated for a Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship and was inducted into the Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society, the nation's oldest all-discipline honor society, which recognizes students both for being ranked scholastically at the top of their class and for their integrity and high ethical standards.
There, he studied with artist in residence Robin Humphrey, a former Broadway actress who had been a member of Lee Strasberg's first class of students at the New York Actors Studio with Marlon Brando, and also taught Drama on a graduate assistantship through the university.
His first professional acting job came in his senior year, when he performed with The Missouri (now Kansas City) Repertory, appearing in productions of "The Miser" and "Oedipus Rex," the latter directed by Alexis Minotis, a film veteran (Alfred Hitchcock's "Notorious") and co-founder of the Royal Theatre of Athens with his wife, actress Katina Paxinou (Oscar winner for "For Whom the Bell Tolls").
That same year, Greg was invited to audition for John Houseman as the Oscar-winning actor-producer, perhaps best known for his collaboration with Orson Welles, was assembling his first Drama Division class at The Juilliard School.
Months after graduation, he landed a principal role in the McQueen-Douglas production "Adam at Six A.M.," which was shooting both in Missouri and in Hollywood.
Greg's unusually assured performance in the film as Ed, the straight arrow young pharmacist vying for the hand of leading lady Lee Purcell _ a role that was to have been cast in Hollywood _ drew praise from the film's producers and writers, who invited him to the West Coast. He accepted, and moved into a small apartment across from the iconic Grauman's Chinese Theatre in the heart of Hollywood.
Greg, who had worked as a reporter for The Kansas City Star while in college, continued to write upon moving to Hollywood as a means of supplementing his income and complementing his acting.
He supplied jokes for Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show," then returned to newspapers, reporting for several of the largest dailies in the United States, moving freely among breaking news, investigative work, entertainment, and arts criticism, with many of his articles appearing in syndication worldwide.
He went on to win a number of writing and reporting awards, including sharing the 1979 Pulitzer Prize as a member of The San Diego Tribune staff for its coverage of one of the worst commercial airliner crashes in U.S. history. His other notable assignments included traveling to the Middle East during the infamous hostage crisis in Iran.
A prize-winning profile writer, his subjects span the cultural spectrum. Writers including Ray Bradbury, Neil Simon, Irving Stone, Joseph Wambaugh, Leo Rosten, Nora Ephron, David Halberstam and David McCullough. Social activists Bella Abzug and Angela Davis. Presidents' sons Elliott Roosevelt (FDR) and Michael Reagan (Ronald Reagan). The quintessentially colorful "King of Torts" attorney Melvin Belli. Influential pediatrician Benjamin Spock and children's author Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel. Classic animators including four of Disney's "Nine Old Men," legendary Warner Bros. Looney Tunes auteur Chuck Jones, and former Disney-Pixar chief John Lasseter. Dancer-choreographers Agnes de Mille and Mikhail Baryshnikov. Baby boomer heroes ranging from Fess "Davy Crockett" Parker to baseball legend Willie Mays. Film luminaries including directors Frank Capra, Billy Wilder, Robert Wise, Stanley Kramer, Richard Donner, Richard Rush, Tony Bill, Wes Craven and Spike Lee, and actors Cary Grant (in one of his last interviews), Jimmy Stewart, Jackie Cooper, Paul Henreid, Norman Lloyd, Gregory Peck, Rod Steiger, Jack Lemmon, Cliff Robertson, Dick Van Dyke, George Peppard, June Allyson, Eva Marie Saint, Jane Russell, Cyd Charisse, Patty Duke, Janet Leigh, Jean Stapleton, Carroll O'Connor, Christopher Reeve, Jim Carrey and John Goodman. Unique personalities including comedians Bob Hope, Jerry Seinfeld, and David Steinberg, boxer Sugar Ray Robinson (often described as the greatest pound-for-pound fighter in the history of the sport), Will Rogers Jr. (discussing his fabled late humorist father), network TV news anchors Douglas Edwards (the first presenter of a nationally regularly scheduled television newscast by an American network) and Tom Brokaw, "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry, composer Frederick Loewe of the storied "My Fair Lady" songwriting duo Lerner and Loewe, stage critic Clive Barnes ("the most powerful man on Broadway"), singer-songwriters Graham Nash and Kenny Rogers, Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler (named one of his profession's 10 most influential in the history of film), makeup guru Michael Westmore of the iconic Hollywood makeup dynasty, TV and film satirist Buck Henry, "the last silents star" Diana Serra "Baby Peggy" Cary, Christina "Mommie Dearest" Crawford, early-Hollywood publicist Andy Hervey (Warner Bros.' very first, who recounted late-night walks with film pioneer D.W. Griffith), "voice of Snow White" Adriana Caselotti from the groundbreaking Disney animated feature, and some of nascent television's most beloved figures, including TV's first super star Milton Berle, ubiquitous TV host and game show guest Steve Allen, Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" sidekick Ed McMahon, baseball player-turned-Hall of Fame broadcaster and storyteller extraordinaire Joe Garagiola, "Leave It to Beaver" mom Barbara "June Cleaver" Billingsley and "Father Knows Best" dad Robert Young, and revered children's show personalities Buffalo Bob Smith ("Howdy Doody") and Bob "Captain Kangaroo" Keeshan.
Greg also pulled back the curtain on entertainment classics, films like "Casablanca" and "On the Waterfront," speaking to those intimately involved with those Oscar-winning productions, and radio's most infamous broadcast, Orson Welles' 1938 "night-that-panicked-America" "War of the Worlds" radio program, interviewing the man who wrote the show's script.
In January 1991, he became the first print journalist allowed inside CNN during the first Persian Gulf War, the first time in history a war was covered in real time, live, on television. CNN was the only 24-hour news network at the time, and the war was broadcast globally, watched by everyone from heads of state (including those of adversaries) to average viewers sitting at home. It put CNN, and the concept of nonstop television news coverage, on the cultural map, something we now take for granted.
He wound up his long journalism career as a TV critic, first of The San Diego Tribune (now The San Diego Union-Tribune), then of The Arizona Republic.
In June 2019, he was invited by The New York Times to meet with its op-ed editors for the second annual "Evening with Letters" conference after being handpicked as one of the paper's top 30 regular contributors from across the U.S.
In September 2021, the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, a museum located on the spot occupied by the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy at the time of the killing, invited Greg to participate in its Oral History Project "to chronicle the assassination ... and present the contemporary culture within the context of presidential history." The museum supports the Dealey Plaza National Historical Landmark District and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza.
Greg thus far has written two books, a collection of his profiles and a political thriller, both of which are now seeking publishers. He is also writing several screenplays.
His industry activities include service on the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (Emmy) Regional Board of Governors; the Screen Actors Guild Prime-Time TV Nominating Committee, its National Committee for Performers with Disabilities and its State Board of Directors; the Film & Media Coalition Board of Directors, and as a member of the Television Critics Association.
He is listed as actor, critic and advocate in Who's Who in America and Who's Who in the World, and is a recipient of the 2017-2018 Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award.
He and his wife of more than 40 years, Mary, have three grown children.
