USATODAY.com - No need for his own 'Entourage'

LOS ANGELES — Adrian Grenier, the boyishly cute actor at the center of HBO's new comedy series Entourage (Sundays, 10 p.m. ET/PT), has just phoned to say he's worried some of the stories he told during a previous day's coffeehouse chat might potentially harm people he loves.

Unlike his slacker character — rising star Vince Chase, who cares more about bedding women than finding a good script — Grenier's focus and heart seem rooted in the right place. About the only thing Grenier and Vince share is the size of their heads: large — an observation pointed out in the first episode when a character quipped to Vince: "the bigger the head, the bigger the star."

"It's true I have a sizable head, compared to others," he concedes of his cranium, which includes a front tooth he chipped while moshing at a Lollapalooza concert seven years ago. "All my features are big — big eyebrows, big nose, big lips, big old tender earlobes, big hair. I have a lot of presence."

His Vince character is not-so-loosely based on movie star Mark Wahlberg, an executive producer on the series, who is famous for bringing his own posse to hotel pools and parties. When he was cast on the show after playing small parts in films like Cecil B. DeMented and Hart's War, Grenier found himself included in Wahlberg's entourage.

But so far, Grenier's own entourage totals just one — an older New York-based photographer he has been in love with for six years. (She has asked him not to reveal her name.)

New York is Grenier's primary residence, but he keeps a small apartment in L.A. that his mom helped him decorate. "I have a couch that I got at a Beverly Hills yard sale. If you ever want to get stuff at yard sales, go to Beverly Hills. They throw out the dopest (stuff)."

Grenier, 28, is the only child born to Karesse Grenier, a real estate agent who was never married to Grenier's father, John Dunbar, a man he never knew growing up. At the 2002 Tribeca Film Festival, Grenier debuted his documentary, Shot in the Dark, which chronicles his search for Dunbar, from whom he remains estranged.

With Entourage wrapping its eight-episode run on Sept. 12 (a longer second season begins shooting in January), the actor is making plans to return to New York. That means Grenier has to return two frail foster kittens he has been nursing back to health over the past two months to an adoption shelter.

"I had to administer antibiotics to them orally two times a day, blend their stinky cat food in my blender and force-feed them with a syringe," he recalls. "The thing I didn't count on was falling in love with them. So this is a very tragic, painful time in my life."