Kinnearing is taking (or attempting to take) a picture of someone on the sly, usually without looking at a viewfinder or projection of the camera viewport. The results rarely capture the subject well, if they capture the subject at all.
The term was coined by Stephanie Pearl McPhee, a/k/a the Yarn Harlot, who saw Greg Kinnear in a Toronto airport in 2007, and decided to attempt to take pictures of this sighting, instead of attempting to engage him in awkward conversation or asking for a picture. Her own account of this encounter is enshrined on the Yarn Harlot blog.
Gregory Buck “Greg” Kinnear is an actor and TV personality. In the early ’90s Kinnear found small-time success as the first host of Talk Soup and succeeding Bob Costas as the host of Later, the show that led out the NBC broadcast day after Letterman. Kinnear had almost immediate success transitioning into film, lauded for his roles in Sabrina and receiving an Oscar nomination for playing Simon in As Good As It Gets, and has landed steady gigs in movies and TV ever since. His other notable film appearances include You’ve Got Mail, Little Miss Sunshine, We Were Soldiers, Invincible, the TV miniseries The Kennedys, and the short lived TV series Rake.
[ed note: updated from the original posting in 2026] Kinnear’s next role after the original publication of this post was Bill Shepherd in the sixth and final season of House of Cards.