Bryan Greenberg: ballet may have been a bust, but his dance card on the big screen is filling up fast and furious

The dramatic phone call has made many an actor's career--in the case of Bryan Greenberg it nearly squashed his before it had even started. Just two weeks before Greenberg was to begin filming his starring role in the new romantic comedy Prime, he was having dinner with the film's writer and director, Ben Younger, when the fateful news came that Sandra Bullock, the film's female lead, was dropping out. Suddenly the 27-year-old actor felt his huge break slipping through his fingers. "I was like, 'You're fucking with me, right?'" Greenberg remembers.

A few days later disappointment turned into serendipity when Uma Thurman signed on to replace Bullock. By the time the relatively unknown actor from Omaha, Nebraska, got to the set, not only was Thurman his love interest, but none other than Meryl Streep was playing his mom. The good fortune is not lost on him. "I haven't even congratulated myself yet," he says. "I'm just freaked out that it happened."

Greenberg's first taste of performing came at the age of 9 when he was waiting for his younger sister outside an audition for a traveling ballet production of The Nutcracker. Suddenly a casting director pulled him inside the theater. "She said they needed boys," he remembers. "But I thought, This ballet stuff's not going to work. I can't dance. So I started doing theater, and I was like, 'I want to do this. Forever.'"

Sarah Wilson last wrote about Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje in the November issue. Left: Clothes by KENNETH COLE NEW YORK. Hair products by KERASTASE. Fragrance: KENNETH COLE BLACK. Styling: LAUREN KOLODNY/artistsbytimothypriano.com. Grooming: DIANE WlEDENMANN/The Wall Group. Fashion details page 159. Photo: CHRIS FORTUNA.

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