NEW YORK — Greg Kinnear strides between the far-fetched comedies of summer and the encroaching season of heavy dramas.

"It's what I believe most," Kinnear says in a recent interview over breakfast, speaking about his inclination to mix comedy and drama. "I can't not find humor in elements of most parts of life, but at the same time nothing ever seems perpetually funny to me."

Laughing, Kinnear adds with some self-mockery: "Deep sadness I find in everything."

The 44-year-old, Indiana-born actor blends humor and seriousness in "Feast of Love," an adaptation of Charles Baxter's novel by director Robert Benton ("Kramer vs. Kramer," "Nobody's Fool") opening today.

In "Feast," Kinnear plays Bradley Thomas, a lovesick coffee shop owner careening optimistically from heartbreak to heartbreak. "He's in love with being in love," says the actor.

Like several of Kinnear's roles, Bradley is a kind soul, earnestly struggling to keep any happiness. In last year's hit "Little Miss Sunshine," he played a desperate self-help guru determined to keep his family afloat. In 2005's "The Matador," he played a businessman whose financial straits tempt him to join a hit man (Pierce Brosnan) in an assassination.

Similarly, in Kinnear's breakthrough performance — 1997's "As Good As It Gets," a supporting role for which he got an Academy Award nomination — he played a painter who's beaten and nearly bankrupt.

Kinnear acknowledges that he's drawn to earnest, desperate characters, or at least "people are drawn to me doing that."

"People trying to keep it together in spite of a swirling vortex of despair they find themselves in is always something that sparks me," Kinnear says wryly. "I don't know what specifically it is that I'm drawn to, but I always feel like I understand it."

Laughing at himself, Kinnear adds in a pitch-perfect Bill Clinton impression: "Feel your pain."

"You get beyond the masks people wear," he says more seriously. "There is some amount of fear and some sense that they're not quite the way they want to be and something's slipping away."

Kinnear's transition to full-fledged actor was solidified by "As Good As It Gets," two years after Sydney Pollack gave him his first movie role in 1995's "Sabrina." Kinnear, who studied broadcast journalism in college, began in television, most notably as the witty host of "Talk Soup" and then the NBC late-night talk show "Later With Greg Kinnear."

Since then, Kinnear's pendulum has swung furthest to the serious side with Paul Schrader's "Auto Focus" (2002) and to the opposite end with the Farrelly brothers' "Stuck on You" (2003). Kinnear is currently shooting "Flash of Genius" in which he plays Bob Kearns, the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper. He believes the sad story, for which he gained 20 pounds, will be "an interesting test."

"It took a long time to get any confidence in being able to do something that wasn't necessarily going for humor," says Kinnear. He adds that while his dramatic muscles have been increasingly worked over the years, he's not reading pages of "Taxi Driver" in the mirror for practice.

Comedy still clearly comes easy for the actor, who lives with his wife and two young daughters in Hollywood. He jokes that his 1-year-old daughter's social calendar is unpredictable: "She has various events planned throughout the night that I just didn't know about."

Kinnear's reluctance for showy acting is gradually gaining notice, especially with those who have worked closely with him.

Alan Arkin — another actor who has long relished combining comedy with tragedy and won an Oscar for playing Kinnear's father in "Little Miss Sunshine" — thinks Kinnear's squeaky-clean quality sometimes hides his ability.

"People kind of dismiss the fact that he's got a depth of talent and he does," says Arkin. "He's got a real range and a terrific imagination."

"Feast of Love" director Robert Benton, says he's watched Kinnear develop as an actor, "and I believe with all of my heart that Greg Kinnear is this generation's Jack Lemmon."

"He can make you laugh and he can break your heart at the same time. He can act and never let you know he's acting," adds Benton. "He's a leading man and a character actor at the same time."

Having first peered into films from the outside, often parodying them on "Talk Soup," Kinnear was initially cautious about calling himself an "actor."

"I still keep some distance from it," says Kinnear. "If there's a club, I'm not in it. But I do obviously feel differently today as I did 10 years ago.

"Work in progress, as they say."