Wind on Water
A kiss is just a kiss
By Tim Ryan
Star-BulletinBRIAN Gross has an unusual problem for a good-looking 21-year-old guy: He's worried about having to kiss this really cute girl over and over and over again. On film.
Gross co stars in the new NBC series "Wind on Water" as 17-year-old Kelly Connolly, the "son" of star Bo Derek and impulsive younger brother of Col Connelly.
"I have this scene with Jacinda (Barrett, who plays girl-next-door Kate Poole) who I have to kiss," the blue-eyed Gross explains on the set at the Big Island's Mahaiula State Park. "It's also my first screen kiss and my girlfriend (of two years) asks me about it, like, everyday on the telephone.
"I'm pretty freaked about the whole thing actually. But Jacinda has a boyfriend and she's being real sweet about this."
Gross, from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, met his non-acting girlfriend at Loyola Marymount University where he's majoring in international business.
"I know everyone at school will watch the show and tease her and that will drive her nuts," Gross said. "But she has to know she has my heart. She's been with me through a lot, even when I was driving a '83 Honda Accord that would breakdown all the time and I would have to get out and lift the hood to readjust the battery to get it going."
Gross has been acting since 17, when he won a Cedar Rapids mall talent contest. He had entered as a joke. Then he moved to New York, got an agent and a manager, and, eventually, a role on the Los Angeles-based 1995-96 series "Hollywood Lives."
When the series ended, Gross stayed in L.A., enrolling at Loyola Marymount. During that time he's guest-starred in the TV series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Baywatch" and "Promised Land," and the 1996 film "Tiger Eyes." In "Baywatch" he played a surly lifeguard; on "Buffy" he was a possessed high school student who turns into a hyena.
The Los Angeles scene was "weird" to the Midwesterner.
"There are so many different kinds of people out there and Iowa isn't as culturally diverse," he said. "I learned to appreciate my family real quick and I made a lot of calls back home.
"If I didn't have an audition I would wake up in the morning and write letters or go work out."
Gross attended dozens of auditions before he was chosen for "Wind" even though he has no experience surfing or riding horses, required of his character. Since then he has taken accelerated lessons in both activities.
Gross' dream isn't to make a career of acting.
"This helps pay for school and maybe set up a nest egg for a college fund when I have kids," said Gross, the oldest of seven children. "This is just a side bar in my life; I get paid well to hang out in Hawaii."
The interview returns to "the kiss."
"I'll probably have to bring (my girlfriend) out here after that episode as a sort of reassuring thing," he says. "I want her to trust me because, well, it's a kiss, yes, but it's my job."
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