Richard Grieco is Not an Actor

That's my theory, anyway.  I'm intentionally writing this post now, before I've seen many of Grieco's movies, so that it's clear that this isn't an assessment of his acting ABILITY.  I don't have much of an opinion about that at this point.  I liked him on 21 Jump Street and I've seen very little else--one bad movie and another in which he played himself.  So let me be explicit:  what I'm saying here isn't "Richard Grieco can't act." 

No, what I'm saying is that there are people who are actors the way I'm a writer or my daughter is a musician--because it's buried deep in their souls and it's part of the way they breathe, the way they process the world, the way they maintain their sanity.  In short, it defines them.

I don't think Richard Grieco was ever that guy.  Now, I have only been aware of the guy for a matter of weeks and I've seen very little of his acting, so maybe I'm entirely wrong.  Bios online certainly want us to believe that he aspired to act from childhood, but I just don't buy it.

First, he went to college in Connecticut.  Does a guy trying to break into acting head for Connecticut in the prime of his youthful beauty?  And what did he do there?  Played football and majored in Political Science.  A guy whose dream is to act can go one of two ways:  he can major in theater or film or some other relevant area, or he can give himself a fallback by majoring in something practical like business or engineering.  Political Science isn't either of those things (trust me on this...I have a Poli Sci degree of my own).  There are basically three reasons to major in Political Science:  you want to go to law school, you want to run for political office or you're just very interested in the way the world around you works. It's not a degree that generates income when your acting career doesn't work out.

By all reports I've seen, he didn't start studying acting until after he'd done some high-profile modeling, and his Gone Country bio says his first audition landed him his recurring role on One Life to Live...when he was 20 or 21.  Who really has the dream and waits that long to go on a single audition?

I know Grieco's done a lot of movies over the years, but is "actor" really who he is, the thing that was in his blood from childhood? I don't see it.  And maybe that's why he seems to have such a sense of humor about the state of his acting career--because maybe it's more of a hobby or a job that just happens to be fun than it is a thing that lives at his core.

I don't know the guy.  I haven't read a lot about him.  I haven't seen many of his movies. But still, that's what I think.  I think the thing that makes Grieco who he is is something else entirely.  Maybe it's music. Maybe it's painting.  Maybe it's something we don't know about. But I don't think it's the thing we know him for.