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Kevin Spacey (born July 26, 1959) is a two-time Academy Award-winning American actor (film and stage) and director. Spacey grew up in California, and began his career as a stage actor during the 1980s, before being cast in supporting roles in film and television. He gained critical acclaim in the early 1990s, culminating in his first Oscar for 1995's The Usual Suspects (Supporting), followed by a Best Actor Oscar win for 1999's American Beauty. Spacey has starred in many other Hollywood films including Se7en, Pay It Forward, L.A. Confidential, and as the villain Lex Luthor in Superman Returns. Since 2003, he has been artistic director of the Old Vic theatre in London. A chameleonic actor equally at home on stage or in film and as a hero or a villain, Kevin Spacey first gained notice with several strong stage performances. Although born in New Jersey, he spent most of his life in Southern California, struggling through what has come to be seen as a "troubled" childhood. As a youngster, he reportedly set fire to his older sister's tree house and was asked to leave a couple of schools, including the very strict Northridge Military Academy. It was only when he settled on performing and found his niche at Chatsworth High School that Spacey (then Kevin Fowler) seemed to come into his own, particularly alongside classmates Val Kilmer (at whose insistence Spacey later attended Juilliard) and Mare Winningham (with him he shared the stage and the honor of being class valedictorian). Spacey was born Kevin Spacey Fowler or Kevin Matthew Fowler in South Orange, New Jersey, the son of Kathleen A. (née Spacey; 5 December 1931 – 19 March 2003), a secretary, and Thomas Geoffrey Fowler (4 June 1924 – Atlanta, Georgia, 24 December 1992), a technical writer. He has two older siblings: a sister, Julie, and a brother, Randy. His father, who has been alleged by Fox News to have been a member of the American Nazi Party, was often unemployed, causing the family to move frequently, eventually settling in Southern California in 1963. Spacey attended Northridge Military Academy after he set his sister's treehouse on fire, but was asked to leave after throwing a tire at another student at the academy, and subsequently attended Chatsworth High School in Chatsworth, California. In the twelfth grade, he starred in the school's senior production of The Sound of Music, playing the part of Captain Georg von Trapp, opposite Maria (played by Mare Winningham). While in high school, he took his mother's maiden name, "Spacey" (originally a Welsh name, belonging to his great-great-grandfather, spelled "Spacy"), as his acting surname. Several reports have incorrectly suggested that he took the name in tribute to actor Spencer Tracy, combining Tracy's first and last names. Spacey had tried to succeed as a stand-up comedian for several years, before attending the Juilliard School in New York City, where he studied drama, between 1979 and 1981. During this time period, Spacey performed stand-up comedy in bowling alley talent contests. While still in school, the compact, average looking Spacey tried his hand at stand-up comedy, garnering some notice for his impressions, but an ill-fated audition for "The Gong Show" curtailed his pursuit of comedy. Instead, he enrolled at NYC's prestigious Juilliard School of Drama but conflicts with his teachers and a desire to get on with his career led to his dropping out after just two years. Spacey was doing office work at Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival (NYSF) when he landed the role of a soldier in the company's production of "Henry VI, Part I" in 1981. Other roles soon followed and Papp one day "fired" the office worker so he would be free to find employment as an actor. It wasn't long thereafter that Spacey made his Broadway debut opposite Liv Ullman in "Ghosts" (1982) which effectively launched his stage career. After appearing in regional theater, Spacey auditioned for the national touring company of "The Real Thing" but director Mike Nichols instead suggested he try for a role in "Hurlyburly", another Nichols-directed play. After understudying the role of Mickey (originated by Harvey Keitel), Spacey went on to serve as standby for two of the other male roles. Nichols later gave the actor his first screen breaks as a subway rider who mugs Meryl Streep's Rachel in "Heartburn" (1986) and as a Wall Street broker in "Working Girl" (1989). In between those two parts, Spacey earned plaudits (although ironically was the only one of the four principals not nominated for a Tony Award) as Jamie Tyrone in Jonathan Miller's controversial staging of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night" (1986; the production was taped for airing on Showtime in 1987). He also called on his background in stand-up to essay an aspiring comic in "Rocket Gibralter" (1988) and created the memorably creepy and mercurial villain Mel Profitt who with his equally kinky sister Susan (Joan Severance) dominated a 1987-88 story arc on CBS' cult hit "Wiseguy.” Spacey's first professional stage appearance was as a messenger in a New York Shakespeare Festival performance of Henry VI, part 1 in 1981. The following year he made his first Broadway appearance in a production of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts. He made his first major television appearance in the second season premiere of Crime Story, playing a Kennedy-esque American senator. Although his interest soon turned to film, Spacey remained actively involved in the live theater community. In 1991, he won a Tony Award for his portrayal of "Uncle Louie" in Neil Simon's Broadway hit Lost in Yonkers. Spacey's father was unconvinced that Spacey could make a career for himself as an actor, and did not change his mind until Spacey became a well known theatre actor. Some of Spacey's earlier roles include a widowed eccentric millionaire on L.A. Law, the made-for-television film The Murder of Mary Phagan (1988) opposite Jack Lemmon, and the Richard Pryor/Gene Wilder-starring comedy See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989). Spacey earned an avid fan base following after playing the criminally insane arms dealer Mel Profitt on the television series Wiseguy. He quickly developed a reputation as a character actor, and was cast in bigger roles, including one-half of the bickering Connecticut couple in the dark comedy The Ref (1994), a malicious Hollywood studio boss in the satire Swimming with Sharks, and the put-upon office manager in the all-star ensemble film Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), gaining him positive notices by critics. Spacey was fast moving to the ranks of respected character actor. The O'Neill drama had inaugurated a collaboration with Jack Lemmon (whom Spacey had met as a teenager) which encompassed the NBC miniseries "The Murder of Mary Phagan" (1988) and the maudlin feature "Dad" (1988). As the 90s dawned, he offered dazzling starring turns as disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker in "Fall From Grace" (NBC, 1990) and as noted lawyer Clarence Darrow in a 1991 PBS docudrama, both of which preceded his Tony-winning featured performance as a gangster wannabe in Neil Simon's nostalgic play "Lost in Yonkers". With the added cachet of his stage accolades, the actor was determined to no longer be reduced to window dressing in films (as he felt had happened to his part in "Henry & June" 1990). Al Pacino had been impressed with Spacey in "Lost in Yonkers" and lobbied for him to be cast as one of the competing real estate wheelers and dealers in "Glengarry Glen Ross" (1992). Later that year, he visited a suburbia riddled with dark secrets for the first time in Alan Pakula's not entirely successful tale of wife swapping and murder, "Consenting Adults". In both these films, Spacey held his own amidst a pool of powerful actors (e.g., Pacino, Lemmon, Kevin Kline) and proved a strong screen presence. 1994's underrated black comedy "The Ref" paired him with the equally formidable Judy Davis as battling spouses whose home is burglarized while that year's "Swimming With Sharks" (on which he also served as a co-producer) allowed him to fully display his venal side as a Hollywood executive. Hitting his stride as slightly nasty or villainous characters, Spacey offered a truly chilling turn as serial killer John Doe in David Fincher's atmospheric "Seven" and stole the proceedings as fast-talking con man 'Verbal' Kint in Bryan Singer's noirish "The Usual Suspects" (both 1995). Along with his work as an army major coping with a potential health threat in "Outbreak", these two performances proved his versatility and screen charisma. Spacey won that year's Best Supporting Actor award for "The Usual Suspects" but it was clearly a nod to his body of work. Switching side of the law, he undertook the role of a smugly crusading prosecutor in the Joel Schumacher-directed "A Time to Kill" (1996), adapted from John Grisham's novel. In 1995, Spacey appeared in Se7en with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, making a sudden and unexpected entrance late in the film as the serial killer John Doe after going unmentioned in the film's ads and opening credits. The crippled criminal Verbal Kint in The Usual Suspects launched him to A-list status and won him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. In 1996, Spacey played an egomaniacal district attorney in A Time to Kill, and founded Trigger Street Productions in 1997 with the purpose of producing and developing entertainment across various media. In 1996 he made his directorial debut with the film Albino Alligator. The film was a failure at the box office but Spacey's direction was praised. Like many performers, Spacey had also longed to direct and he stepped behind the cameras for "Albino Alligator" (1997), a drama about three petty crooks mistaken for big-time bank robbers. What the film lacked in visual flourishes, it more than made up for in its cast. Spacey clearly had much to learn about camera placement and movement but he clearly knew how to deal with actors, eliciting fine work from Gary Sinise, Matt Dillon and Viggo Mortensen. But the film's claustrophobic setting and its mixed critical reception doomed it to modest box office returns. While Spacey the director suffered a setback, Spacey the actor offered one of his finest screen performances as the smarmy but sexy celebrity cop Jack Vincennes in "L.A. Confidential" (1997). Similarly his Jim Williams, the homosexual Savannah resident accused of murder, in "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" (also 1997) allowed the actor to plumb the depths of what Dwight Garner at Salon.com (September 19, 1997) called his mastery of "radiating woozy insincerity". Both characters traded in facades, Vincennes as a mildly corrupt cop who comes to redemption and Williams as an upstanding citizen who succumbs to the dark side. In both cases, Spacey etched memorable roles, although only the former enjoyed relative box-office attention. Spacey won universal praise and a Best Actor Oscar for his role as a depressed suburban father who re-evaluates his life in 1999's American Beauty; the same year, he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Spacey also earned another Tony nomination the same year for his work in a Broadway production of "The Iceman Cometh". During the several years following American Beauty's release, Spacey appeared in films that he believes "hadn't done as well critically or in terms of box office". In 2001, Spacey co-hosted with Dame Judi Dench Unite for the Future Gala, the UK's fundraiser for the British Victims of 9/11 and Medecins Sans Frontieres at London's Old Vic Theatre, produced by Harvey Goldsmith and Dominic Madden. His successful turn as Jim Williams merely fueled speculation about his private life which peaked with an October 1997 Esquire cover story by Tom Junod that intimated that the actor was coy about his private life. The matter proved a double edged sword for Spacey: He earned sympathy from those who felt the journalist and the magazine had crossed a line but scorn from those who felt he should offer comments on his private life. (The actor later addressed those concerns in a 1999 Playboy interview.) The profile, however, had no effect on his career: Spacey turned hero to essay a cop who excels at excising hostages from their kidnappers in "The Negotiator" (1998). Paired with Samuel L. Jackson (who played a good cop suspected of wrongdoings), he proved a mesmerizing presence and matched Jackson's intensity; the pair meshed well and elevated a somewhat pedestrian mystery into an enjoyably watchable film. After a turn voicing the evil Hopper in the animated "A Bug's Life", Spacey committed his stage role of the amoral and cynically sarcastic casting agent to film in "Hurlyburly" (both 1998). As has been his ilk, he imbued what on the surface could be an unlikable person with a sly charm. Unlike many stage-trained actors who make a success in Hollywood, Spacey returned to the theater amidst much fanfare. He undertook the difficult role of Theodore Hickman, 'Hickey' to his friends, in Eugene O'Neill's mammoth "The Iceman Cometh", originally staged at London's Almeida Theatre in the spring of 1998, Undertaking a role that had become associated with Jason Robards (Jr.), Spacey made it his own, offering an unique perspective on the hardware salesman by fashioning "Hickey anew as an evangelist offering up tidings far grimmer than they are glad. He show[ed] an erstwhile prophet of hope hollowed out by guilt and pain, embarked on a path to redemption that leads him straight to hell", according to Matt Wolf in Daily Variety (April 16, 1998). The production transferred to London's West End where he scooped up virtually every accolade, so it came as no surprise when the production was remounted on Broadway the following year. As the play ran some four hours plus, production costs were high and the producers charged $100 per ticket, but at the star's insistence, a block of seats was held daily to be sold to students at the deeply discounted price of $20. Spacey charmed the NYC critics and earned a Tony Award nomination but lost the medallion to Brian Dennehy (who ironically had starred in a Chicago production of "Iceman Cometh"). Also in 1999, Spacey returned to the big screen as Lester Burnham in "American Beauty", a character who ranks among his best and most fully realized screen creations. In delineating the mid-life crisis of a man who moves from a defeated schlub (henpecked by an overbearing wife, dismissed by his teenage daughter and rendered impotent at his dead-end job) to an empowered, take-charge guy, the actor undertook a risky role that firmly vaulted him from esteemed character actor to leading man. His take on the role was to show Lester's hardening, in both the physical (he pumps iron) and the abstract (he asserts himself as head of the household). Even enacting his fantasies about his daughter's cheerleader classmate, while verging on bad taste is redeemed by the actor's earnestness and skill. Spacey earned critical huzzahs and his second Oscar, this time as Best Actor. Returning to his more conventional persona as a slickster, he teamed with Danny DeVito to star as a smooth-talking salesman in "The Big Kahuna"—a dazzling performance in an otherwise little-seen film—before starring in "Ordinary Decent Criminal" (both 2000), a fictionalized biography of Irish master thief Martin Cahill (played by Brendan Gleeson in 1998's "The General"). Playing juicy roles in small films didn't affect Spacey's reputation as one of the premiere actors working in Hollywood, but the actor lost some steam when he starred in the mawkish "Pay It Forward" (2000) playing a scarred schoolteacher who opens himself up to love when his young student devises a system of paying good deeds forward to three people. Spacey's affected manor and overdone makeup did little to aid this already over-sentimentalized tale. In 2001, Spacey received mixed reviews when he teamed with Jeff Bridges in "K-PAX", playing a man who claims to be an alien from outer space. Later that year, he was cast--many would argue miscast—as the milquetoast hero of the screen adaptation of the Pulitzer-winning "The Shipping News," which also suffered from tepid reviews and indifferent audience response. He played a physically and emotionally scarred grade school teacher in Pay It Forward, a patient in a mental institution who may or may not be an alien in K-Pax, and singer Bobby Darin in Beyond the Sea. Beyond The Sea was a lifelong dream project for Spacey, who took on co-writing, directing, and starring duties in the biography/musical about Darin's life, career, and relationship with late actress Sandra Dee. Spacey provided his own vocals on the Beyond the Sea soundtrack and appeared in several tribute concerts around the time of the film's release. He received mostly positive reviews for his singing, as well as a Golden Globe nomination for his performance. However, reviewers criticized the age disparity between Spacey and Darin, noting that Spacey was too old to convincingly portray him. Spacey has said that despite criticism, he is still proud of the film. In between projects, Spacey distinguished himself as a champion of both actors and acting, become actively involved with the activities of the Screen Actors Guild, launching the website Triggerstreet.com as a means for aspiring, creative people without agents to form an online community to get their ideas and projects in front of Hollywood decision- makers, and in 2003 he was named as the artistic director of London's historic Old Vic Theater, a stage he had fallen in love with during a childhood trip to England, and where he appeared in his triumphant 1998 production of Eugene O'Neill's "The Ice Man Cometh.” Despite being a celebrity—guaranteeing not giving him the anonymity enjoyed past artistic directors—Spacey’s tenure at the Old Vic was a rocky one. He was criticized for not putting on enough of the classics, though his “Richard II,” in which he starred as the immature and detached king, was critically acclaimed. While the press had a field day lambasting his choices, Spacey cited his success in bring the theater back into public prominence. Several productions—notably “National Anthems” (2005) and “Philadelphia Story” (2005)—brought in the audience, but reviews were savage. Then Spacey hit a bona fide disaster with Arthur Miller’s “Resurrection Blues,” which suffered a poor performances and attendance that failed to reach even half-capacity. But Spacey remained unapologetic—he claimed the press was out to get him because of his celebrity and promised to astonish doubters with a stronger program. Spacey hosted the long-running NBC sketch show Saturday Night Live twice: once in 1997 with musical guest Beck and special guests Michael Palin and John Cleese from Monty Python's Flying Circus (where Spacey impersonated Christopher Walken, Walter Matthau, and Jack Lemmon in a three-part pre-taped sketch about actors who auditioned for the original Star Wars movie) and again in the last episode of the 31st season with musical guest Nelly Furtado (where Spacey played a detective in the sketch "Two A-Holes At A Crime Scene," one of the Falconer's past selves in Will Forte's "The Falconer" sketch, Neil Young in a fake commercial for a new album with songs by musicians who are against George W. Bush and his administration, and as himself in a "The Usual Suspects" parody where Andy Samberg lies to Spacey as to why he's late to the show). The actor was next seen as an academic with strong views on capital punishment who finds himself accused of murder in director Alan Parker's film "The Life of David Gale" (2003). Again slipping into a now-familiar martyr role, Spacey found his performance praised despite the movie's many flaws, which included an overwrought and unconvincing story and an anti-death penalty message delivered with complete overkill. Changing gears, Spacey returned beyond the camera to helm (and co-write and star in) "Beyond the Sea" (2004), a project he had long dreamed of: a biopic surrounding the popular 50s and 60s singer Bobby Darin, whom the actor had idolized and imitated since he was a child. Ironically, the heart-impaired singer died an early death, and by the time Spacey got the project into production he was nearly too old to play Darin; fortunately a clever script device had Darin looking back at his life and plugging his late-years self into his memories, which allowed audiences to easily forgive Spacey's age. The actor provided a tour de force performance and provided all of the Darin-like vocals himself (he even subsequently embarked on a multi-city concert tour singing Darin standards to promote the film), and as a director he excelled at visually the film's lavish and energetic musical sequences, although only Spacey could sell some of the clunky dialogue, and his chemistry with the much-younger Kate Bosworth, playing Darin's real-life wife Sandra Dee, was lacking. Still, despite being an obvious vanity project there was much to admire about the film, and Spacey delivered one of his finest performances. Spacey made headlines when he agreed to reunite with Bryan Singer for the director's revival of the original comic book film franchise, playing the Man of Steel's brilliant nemesis Lex Luthor in "Superman Returns" (2006). With a shaven head and flashy suits, Spacey exuded a much more subdued evil than did predecessor Gene Hackman in the 1978 version. Nonetheless, Luthor’s plot this time around was no less dastardly—he plans to use Superman’s own technology from Krypton to create a new land mass in the Atlantic Ocean so he can destroy the United States, sending Superman (Brandon Routh) on an epic journey through the depths of the ocean and into the reaches of outer space. In 2006, Spacey played the nefarious Lex Luthor in the Bryan Singer-directed superhero film, Superman Returns. It recently was confirmed he will return in the sequel, scheduled for 2009. Spacey also appeared in Edison Force (originally titled Edison), co-starring Morgan Freeman and Justin Timberlake; Edison Force received a direct-to-video release on July 18, 2006. In 2008, he played an MIT lecturer in the film 21, along with Kate Bosworth, Laurence Fishburne, and Jim Sturgess. The film is based on Ben Mezrich's best seller, Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions, a story of student MIT card-counters who used mathematical probability to aid them in card games such as Black Jack. Spacey is well-known in Hollywood for his skillful impersonations – when he appeared on Inside the Actors Studio he imitated, at host James Lipton's request: Jimmy Stewart, Johnny Carson, Katharine Hepburn, Clint Eastwood, John Gielgud, Marlon Brando, Christopher Walken, Al Pacino and Jack Lemmon. Capitol/EMI's "Forever Cool" (2007) features two duets with Spacey and the voice of the late Dean Martin: "Ain't That a Kick in the Head" and "King of the Road." In February 2003, Spacey announced that he was returning to London to become the artistic director of the Old Vic, one of the city's oldest theatres. Appearing at a press conference alongside (among others) Dame Judi Dench and Sir Elton John, he promised both to appear on stage and to bring in big-name talent. Spacey undertook to remain in the post for a full ten years. He thus became the first Artistic Director of the newly formed Old Vic Theatre Company, which stages shows eight months out of the year. Its first season, starting in September 2004, opened with the British premiere of the play Cloaca by Maria Goos, directed by Spacey, which opened to mixed reviews. In the 2005 season, Spacey made his UK Shakespearean debut, to good notices, in the title role of Richard II (directed by Trevor Nunn). After that, in mid 2006, Spacey noted that he was "having the time of [his] life" working at the Old Vic, and explained that at this point in his career, he felt that he was "trying to do things now that are much bigger than myself and outside of myself". He performed in productions of National Anthems by Dennis McIntyre, and The Philadelphia Story by Philip Barry in which he played the role made famous by Cary Grant in the film version. Critics applauded Spacey's daring for taking on the management of a theatre, but noted that while his acting was impressive, his skills and judgment as a producer/manager had yet to develop. However in the 2006 season, Spacey suffered a humiliating failure with a production of Resurrection Blues, a little-known Arthur Miller play, directed by film director Robert Altman. Despite an all-star Hollywood cast (including Neve Campbell and Matthew Modine) and the pedigree of Miller's script, Spacey's decision to lure Altman to the stage proved disastrous: after a fraught rehearsal period, the play opened to a critical panning, and closed only a few weeks into its run. Spacey resurrected his game later in the year, starring in Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten along with Colm Meaney and Eve Best. The play received excellent reviews for Spacey and Best, and was transferred to Broadway in 2007. For the spring part of the 2007-8 season American film actor Jeff Goldblum and British Laura Michelle Kelly joined Spacey as the three characters in David Mamet's 1988 play Speed-the-Plow. Spacey was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by London South Bank University in November 2005. Spacey is a friend of former President Bill Clinton, having met Clinton before his presidency began. Spacey has described Clinton as "one of the shining lights" of the political process. According to Federal Election Commission data, Spacey has contributed $42,000 to Democratic candidates and committees. He additionally had a cameo appearance in President Clinton: Final Days, a light-hearted political satire produced by the Clinton administration for the White House Correspondents Dinner. In September 2006, Spacey announced his intention to stay on at the Old Vic for at least another nine years, and that due to his continuing UK residency he intends to take up British citizenship when it becomes available to him. There has been persistent speculation about Spacey's sexual orientation, fueled by a 1997 Esquire article on the actor, which implied he was gay. Spacey denied the allegation, telling Playboy magazine that the story "...was a setup." While Spacey is a bachelor and reticent about his personal life, he has consistently asserted that he is heterosexual. In September 2007, Spacey met Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez. Neither of them spoke to the press about their encounter, but hours later the actor visited the publicly funded movie studio, Cinema Villa. Later in December he was co-hosting the Nobel Peace Prize Concert together with Uma Thurman. |
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