Georgia on His Mind

Little Miss Sunshine's Greg Kinnear loves walking with the ghosts in Savannah. His dog? Not so much. . Photographs by Sheryl Nields.

Greg Kinnear found Savannah, that legendary Georgia city spared by General William Sherman and later immortalized in a novel, like most people find Savannah: by chance and good luck.

Kinnear and his wife were driving a rental car down to visit friends in a small Georgia town, and they had a week or two to spare. "We just went on a crazy sort of Southern road trip," he says. "And we made it through Savannah and a few other cities. That's really when I first kind of started digging Georgia in general."

He fell particularly hard for Savannah. Already rich in history, the coastal city became a global tourist destination with the publication in 1994 of John Berendt's best-selling book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil; tourism increased 46 percent and spun off Midnight tours, a movie, and more. Kinnear really got to know Savannah six years ago, while he was in town filming The Gift, and marveled at the city's beauty, spirit, and lore.

This month, the actor, who lives in Los Angeles, is a member of the ensemble cast of Little Miss Sunshine, which follows the six-member Hoover family as they trek from their home in Albuquerque to enter seven-year-old Olive in the Little Miss Sunshine pageant in Redondo Beach, California. Here's the real-life trek Greg Kinnear took that led him through the most original city in the South.