ANN ARBOR, MI - Greg Goss has a typical story for an Ann Arbor native. The 29-year-old went to St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic School, then Pioneer High then the University of Michigan.
He also decided to pursue a classic Hollywood arc four years ago as a fresh-faced Midwestern man packing his bags to try to make it big in film.
Through commercials for brand-name companies such as Target, short films and a feature-length script in a studio executive’s hands, Goss could be entering the next act of a young career.
“I wouldn’t have expected this 10 years ago,” he said. “I’ve found that being out in Hollywood is about carving your own paths, and that takes time.”
Goss was born in Ann Arbor. His father Gregory played football at UM in the 1980s and his uncle is Tom Goss, who also played football at UM and was the university’s athletic director from 1997 to 2000.
Acting and the arts were not always a goal for Goss. He interned at the Washtenaw County Public Defenders Office in 2010 and initially attended UM to major in business. He describes his early college days as “a sort of purgatory” where he lacked direction.
He dropped out of UM to take some time off and live in St. Lucia in the Caribbean. He discovered a love for “creating” there, from music to film to photography, he said.
“I was traveling alone, but I had a camera and I developed an eye that felt authentic (to me),” he said. “After about six months there, I decided to come back to Michigan.”
When he returned to study at UM, he took acting and art classes in the Residential College. He starred in productions of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and playwright Gopal Sharman’s “The Ramayana” in 2017, igniting a love for performance.
“I just dove head first,” he said. “I just dove right in.”
His sister already lived in Los Angeles working in the film industry, so Goss decided to take the leap and move there.
“I didn’t have a job,” he said. “I didn’t know what I was going to do for income, but I knew I wanted to be there. It was just one of those things where I had an instinct to be there.”
The initial attempts at auditioning for parts was a “nerve-wracking” experience,” he said.
“This was pre-COVID,” he said, clarifying that auditions are easier now because they are many times done virtually on Zoom. “Walking into the room, you really have to be comfortable with with yourself, and I would say the first couple of months there were a lot of nerves involved, but you get over it.”
He started landing roles in commercials for name-brands such as Target, GoDaddy.com, Remy Martin Cognac and Bass Pro Shop. He also was featured in short films, including a 2021 film called “A Letter on Loss.”
However, Goss hopes his most recent work behind the camera will hit big.
He wrote a script called “July” about a white man in segregation-era Virginia working on an all-Black chain gang and befriending one of the men. Goss said it is currently in the hands of an executive at Paramount Pictures.
“It’s a feel-good movie,” he said. “It’s a friendship movie. It’s a time piece with historically accurate underpinnings.”
To make it big with a major studio would be a validation of his hard work in Hollywood, Goss said. Even if this falls through, he hopes the experience will help connect him with other creative people to work on follow-up projects, such as a short film to accompany a song he published this fall.
The film will be titled “Peace of Time” (he is raising funds for it here), while the song is titled “The Frame of Time.” With all the time Goss has put into his young career, the titles are very personal to him.
“Time has been a big theme in my life, because you get out (to Hollywood) and you’re young and ambitious, and you you can be impatient,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot about patience and taking things into your own hands.”
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