Greg Heffley

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"I'll be famous one day, but for now, I'm stuck in middle school with a bunch of morons."

—Greg Heffley, on back cover of Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Gregory "Greg" Heffley is an American middle school student and the main protagonist of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. He is believed to be loosely based on Jeff Kinney when he was in middle school. Greg is very concerned about his popularity level and how he looks in public. He absolutely loves video games, comics, and slacking off, taking after his older brother, Rodrick Heffley. He takes up a lot of traits from Rodrick (such as selfishness, laziness, etc.). He also has an interest in cartooning and making comics. He was played by Zachary Gordon in the live-action movies Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days. Greg is portrayed by Jason Drucker in the 2017 live-action film, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul.

Personality

Greg is lazy, petty, narcissistic, sociopathic, egotistical, eccentric, egocentric, usually backstabbing, and sometimes even selfish and dishonest, and apparently lacks talent. He hardly has any skills aside from video games and possibly singing. However, despite all this, Greg still has had his kind and caring moments, just not that often. He hates taking the blame for anything, and would much rather not take all the credit. Greg explains and narrates throughout the series that he has no strong talents, other than video games and comics. As such, he spends most of his time on them, which deters him away from schoolwork and chores. For a time, he harbored a hope of drawing for the school newspaper, but his comic was bowdlerized by the editor (Mr. Ira) and Rowley’s comic, which was also Greg's idea, was better liked by the people at his school. He hardly shows any other talents. However, Greg is probably good at singing, due to the fact that when he was auditioning for the school play, the drama teacher told him he had a nice soprano (high male) voice and is also good at sewing, but he complains that these talents do not make him stand out.

Greg almost always tries to find a scapegoat to put the blame on for his behavior, but he is oblivious to the fact that nobody forced or influenced him, other than probably his older brother, Rodrick, to act in this manner. Very few times has Greg actually admitted to being "wrong" in a decision he made and took responsibility for it. It should also be noted that while Greg is arguably a watered down version of Rodrick, he does not have any productive interests and could actually be considered more hurtful than Rodrick psychologically.

Although he's considered a "wimp", he has a problematic behavior in many cases, and he often puts himself and his family into trouble. Typically he is looking to find a scapegoat to blame, and only in very rare occasions does he admits being "wrong", but he also seems to care for others and, as such, is willing to give himself to people he loves, especially Rodrick. The parents of his best friend, Rowley, believe Greg is a bad influence on their son (mainly Rowley's dad) because he sometimes gets bad grades in school, does not focus on his studies like he's supposed to, and barely listens to his parents.

Greg wants to be famous when he grows up and imagines it many times. He is very petty in order to win.

Greg always has an exaggerated thought, being confident of being rich and famous. He also kind of bullies and use Rowley much more than needed, as he often thinks of hurting him and makes him do a lot of his work, like giving him piggy-rides, looking out for dog-poop, and completing Greg's English work since Greg is not good at writing in cursive, though Greg believes that he is doing it for a good cause. Although Greg is shown not to be hostile towards Rowley, in Rowley's diary, Diary of an Awesome, Friendly Kid, Greg can be seen shouting at Rowley for trying out his retainer.

He also had a huge crush on Holly Hills, when she turned up at the seventh graders' roller rink (Rodrick Rules film). Holly Hills was a new seventh grader at Westmore Middle School whom he fell deeply in love with. In the film adaptations of Rodrick Rules and Dog Days, he put in so much effort to win Holly all to himself, which was what Rodrick was reading out loud from Greg's diary in the film Rodrick Rules. After Holly's sister Heather Hills' Sweet Sixteen party in the film Dog Days, Holly took Greg's hand, indicating she liked him back and she thinks he is really amusing. However, in the books, Greg lost interest in Holly after she mistook him for Fregley.

Appearance

Greg Heffley's appearance in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid film

Greg is usually depicted with black shorts, or black pants (sometimes black jeans, or, when he is fantasizing, a black tuxedo) and a white shirt. He is very skinny and does not seem to eat nor work out much. His father has tried to get him to work out and exercise, but he prefers playing video games. His nose is a simple oval but stops where the first eye is while his ears are circled. His head is a circle that stops around his left eye. He also appears to wear contact lenses, which he mentioned in The Last Straw. He wears his backup glasses when he runs out of them. Greg also has a retainer as mentioned in Diary of an Awesome, Friendly Kid and a headgear as shown in The Ugly Truth. He also wears white shoes or black sandals (as shown in "Dog Days")

In the movie, he has brown hair and pale white skin. Like in the book, he's visually skinny and slightly shorter than Rowley.

Trivia

Greg likes soap operas, as shown in Dog Days.
Greg is younger than Rowley, as his birthday takes place during the summer, while Rowley's takes place during the first semester of the school year.
- Greg's was born on February 19 in the online version. He has the same birthday as Jeff Kinney, the author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.
- Greg was born in June (Dog Days) and Rowley was born in October (Rodrick Rules).
- If calculated well enough, Greg is revealed to be born on June 18.
Greg's birthday is in June in the book and movie series while it is in February according to the online version.
Greg was born premature, as stated in The Third Wheel.
Greg was only five pounds seven ounces at birth with an average being 7.5 pounds, though newborns may vary from 5.5-10 pounds, this may be as he was born 3 weeks premature, even though most children born up to one month premature are of normal weight.
It is revealed in The Last Straw that Greg swears a lot, often swearing at school and even swearing in front of his toddler brother, Manny and also using "made-up" swears like "Raspberry Plastic Tickle Bear!", etc.
- Greg is shown to swear and yell a lot in The Wimpy Kid Do-It-Yourself Book's version of Diary of an Awesome, Friendly Kid.
In the second film when Greg finds out Manny put a cookie in his gaming console, you can see that it is an Xbox 360 Slim. In Dog Days, there are multiple times when you can see Greg playing a PlayStation Portable and an unidentified home-console.
- Greg is shown to be playing with a controller almost similar to the Nintendo 64 controller.
Greg is the least popular kid in school in the first film after he got beaten up by Patty in Wrestling Class, and in "The Wizard of Oz" play.
Greg is right-handed, as revealed in the eleventh book.
Greg owns a Ladybug in the Dog Days book and in the Dog Days film and later mentioned in the book. Hard Luck later temporarily owning her mother's Cell Phone. In the Long Haul film, it shows Greg owning an iPhone. In the book The Getaway, Greg is shown to own an iPod. It is unexplained how he received it.
In the Rodrick Rules film, it is showed that Greg has a YouTube Channel named "amazingGregheffley".
Greg's favorite color is blue.
Greg's favorite animal is a dog.
In Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Getaway Greg is shown to have arachnophobia, a fear of spiders.
In the book "Dog Days", Greg's phone number is revealed as 555-2941.
In the books "Dog Days" and The Ugly Truth, Greg's address is revealed as 12 Surrey Street.