Greg Germann
Greg Germann is an actor, born 1958.
Nobody plays a man with money and no shame quite as precisely as Germann does. He had been working since the mid 1980s, in Streetwalkin', The Whoopee Boys, Child's Play 2 and Once Around, when Ally McBeal cast him as Richard Fish and gave him the register he has been refining ever since. The show earned him a Screen Actors Guild award and made him the person you call when a character needs to say something appalling and mean it warmly.
Look at the parts that followed and the pattern is almost comic in its consistency: Larry Dennit Junior, the sponsor's son in Talladega Nights; Greg Norbert in House of Lies; Peter Penny in Get Hard; Sig Thorenson in 57 Seconds; Benedict Binswanger in Firefly Lane. Executives, lawyers, agents, men in good suits with something to sell.
Grey's Anatomy did the most interesting thing with it. Doctor Tom Koracick arrived as the same smirking operator and was gradually handed something much sadder to play, which only works because Germann had spent twenty years establishing the surface for the show to crack. Will Trent used the same trick more darkly.
He also has an underrated voice sideline, including the agent in Bolt, and a sitcom past that runs from Ellen through Ned & Stacey to Raising Hope and Friends from College.
Movies (28)
- Bolt (2008)
- Child's Play 2 (1990)
- I.Q. (1994)
- Clear and Present Danger (1994)
- Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006)
- 57 Seconds (2023)
- Get Hard (2015)
- Here Comes the Boom (2012)
- The Sandlot 2 (2005)
- Sweet November (2001)
- Group Sex (2010)
- Quarantine (2008)
- The Little Rascals Save the Day (2014)
- Get a Job (2016)
- Joe Somebody (2001)
- Friends with Money (2006)
- Down to Earth (2001)
- Atlas Shrugged: Part III (2014)
- Foster Boy (2019)
- Imaginary Crimes (1994)
- Good Men (2024)
- Spectacular! (2009)
- Once Around (1991)
- Quitters (2015)
- Assault at West Point: The Court-Martial of Johnson Whittaker (1994)
- The Night We Never Met (1993)
- Streetwalkin' (1985)
- The Whoopee Boys (1986)
TV (19)
- Grey's Anatomy (2005)
- Not Suitable for Work (2026)
- Will Trent (2023)
- Phineas and Ferb (2007)
- Ellen (1994)
- Raising Hope (2010)
- Tour of Duty (1987)
- The Twilight Zone (2002)
- Ally McBeal (1997)
- House of Lies (2012)
- Chasing Life (2014)
- Ned & Stacey (1995)
- Firefly Lane (2021)
- About a Boy (2014)
- Friends from College (2017)
- Common Law (2012)
- Listen Up! (2004)
- Bakersfield P.D. (1993)
- In Case of Emergency (2007)
Where to start with Greg Germann
Ally McBeal is where the persona was built, and even if the show has aged into something strange, Richard Fish is a genuinely original comic creation and Germann is doing all of it on purpose.
The better modern watch is Grey's Anatomy, where the same character type is handed real grief and does not collapse under it. Pair it with Will Trent, which pushes the smiling-professional thing somewhere much colder, and Firefly Lane, which puts the same smiling surface to distinctly uncomfortable use.
For comedy, House of Lies gives him a corporate operator worth savouring, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is the purest distillation of the smarm, and Friends with Money is the closest he gets to playing an ordinary man. Ned & Stacey is the 1990s sitcom deep cut.