Actor Kevin Spacey.KEVIN SPACEY:
HOLLYWOOD'S CHAMELEON
By
Alex Simon
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the September 1997 issue of Venice Magazine.
In a relatively short amount of time, Kevin Spacey has moved to the forefront of American actors. A brief list of his credits include starring roles in A Time to Kill, Looking for Richard, Seven, Swimming With Sharks, Outbreak, The Ref, Glengarry Glen Ross, Consenting Adults and The Usual Suspects, for which he won the 1995 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. In addition, The National Board of Review, New York Film Critics, Chicago Film Critics, Seattle Film Festival and the MTV Awards honored him for his role as the crippled and deceitful criminal Verbal Kint in director Bryan Singer's dual Oscar winning thriller.
Kevin Spacey was born July 26, 1959 in South Orange, New Jersey. He grew up in the San Fernando Valley area of California, becoming active in high school dramatics. After doing the round of local comedy clubs following high school graduation and community college, Spacey was accepted to the prestigious Julliard drama school in New York, where he studied for two years. He soon made his stage debut as a messenger in Joseph Papp's 1981 Central Park production of Henry IV, Part I. A year later, he made his Broadway debut as Oswald opposite Liv Ullmann in Ibsen's Ghosts. He was an understudy in Mike Nichols' production of Hurlyburly on Broadway and co-starred opposite Colleen Dewhurst in the Kennedy Center production of Chekov's The Seagull. Other theatrical work includes Barbarians, Right Behind the Flag, Real Dreams, and As It Is In Heaven.
His breakthrough came as Jamie Tyrone in Jonathan Milller's 1986 Broadway and London production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night with Jack Lemmon and Peter Gallagher. He most recently premiered Athol Fugard's Playland at the Manhattan Theater Club, directed by the author.
Television audiences know Kevin as Mel Profitt on the CBS series Wiseguy, and for his performance as Clarence Darrow in the American Playhouse production of Darrow, directed by John Coles.
Kevin also recently made his directorial debut with Albino Alligator, starring Matt Dillon, Gary Sinise and Faye Dunaway in a claustrophobic tale of two bank robbers who hole up in a dingy New Orleans bar.
Upcoming projects include F. Gary Gray's The Negotiator, with Samuel L. Jackson, and then repeating his stage role of Mickey in the film version of David Rabe's Hurlyburly with Sean Penn, Holly Hunter and Robin Wright Penn. He will also play Hickey in the Howard Davies production of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh at the Almeida Theatre in London next Spring.
Kevin just wrapped the film adaptation of the best seller Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, directed by Clint Eastwood, and his upcoming film, the adaptation of James Ellroy's L.A. Confidential, directed by Curtis Hanson. With his masterful performance in Confidential, Spacey has possibly earned himself another Oscar, and at the very least a nomination, for his role as the opportunistic, fame-chasing cop Jack Vincennes. In his relatively short time on American screens, Kevin Spacey has become the sort of actor that most people thought died out with the likes of Henry Fonda, Spencer Tracy and James Stewart: a brilliant character actor who seems to morph and disappear into every role that he plays. A character actor who has also become a movie star.
Kevin, who lives in New York City full time, took some time recently over lunch in L.A. to talk about his past, present and future as an actor, director and Hollywood chameleon.
You seem to be a consummate artist quite naturally. Did you come from an artistic family?
Kevin Spacey: My father was a technical procedure writer, which means that if you were building the F-16, my father would've written the manual to tell you how to do it. Very technical work, work I suspect that was not all that interesting for a man who really fancied himself a creative writer and really wanted to be a novelist and spent most of his private time working on a variety of stories and novels and things I really only discovered after he died. My mother was a private secretary for quite a while. But we moved around a lot and without being a Navy brat, I almost felt like one.
Any siblings?
I have an older brother and sister.
Were you always fascinated with things creative from the time you were a kid?
I think probably my earliest recollections are sneaking downstairs while my parents were asleep and watching the late show, or the late, late show and seeing a lot of great black and white films. So before I ever started going to the movies, my introduction to film were the movies of Tracy and Fonda and Bogart and Stanley Kramer and that kind of style. Then when I actually started going to movie theaters...there was a theater in Thousand Oaks called The Melody, which some told me was just demolished...I remembered being really frightened initially by my early experiences in the theater itself. I remember my mother taking me to some really bizarre films...Peckinpah's Straw Dogs sticks out, and Blade of Grass as two that really disturbed me. Later on in junior high and high school we'd go to the film festival here in Century City and for years and years the Nuart was my home away from home. I'd go there and watch Eraserhead, or Peter Brooks' King Lear. I remember once a friend and I got really angry because the prints at the Nuart were so bad. Scratched and cut and jumping all over the place...We went to the manager's office, knocked on the door, said 'hi,' and very calmly suggested that instead of calling the theater the 'Nuart' they should change the name to 'Oldart.' He told us to get the fuck out (laughs).
Did you start acting in high school?
I sort of fell into it when I was in junior high, although my parents would say I'd been doing it in the living room for years. One of the first things I ever did was a pantomime and just that reaction that I got in my class of twenty people, was a pretty impressive feeling...so I just found myself falling right into it and embracing it in a major way and within a couple years I was directing scenes and acting in plays and writing plays, doing drama festivals. There were these festivals that they used to have at Northridge College where they chose the three best representatives of high school plays throughout southern California, although now I think much of the funding that paid for these sorts of things has been cut...So on a weekend these schools would have workshops, then on a Saturday and Sunday these schools would re-mount their plays. We were fortunate enough to be chosen, doing a production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons. The day before we went on, Chatsworth High School did The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie with Mare Winningham and Val Kilmer in the lead roles! I remember sitting out in the audience and thinking "Who the fuck are these actors?! They're so good!" And at that point I was somewhat frustrated by the opportunities I'd been getting at my school, so I thought I'd really like to go to Chatsworth because those are the sorts of people I'd like to fall in with and I wound up transferring to Chatsworth the following year and we all ended up doing our plays together. Val wound up going to Julliard two years before I did and was enormously encouraging to me that I should audition and come out there if I was really serious about it. I took his advice and did it. So we ended up spending his last two years and my first two years together, then we wound up doing our first play together, playing spear carriers or something in a Joe Papp production of Shakespeare in the Park. It was the greatest way to spend a summer in New York, just the coolest. We'd take a rowboat out to the middle of the lake and have lunch before the show. It was a really priceless experience. Mandy Patinkin and John Goodman were in the show as well. There was actually a whole troupe of us in the chorus who went on to make lives for ourselves. A pretty great summer. 1981.
I heard you did the comedy club circuit for a while. Were you the class clown?
I only did that just at the tail end of high school. I wanted to see what it was like and had really admired comedians, but had no idea what stand-up was like, other than what I'd seen on The Tonight Show. But I was a bit of the kid in the back of the room, making voices, getting other people in trouble, then acting my way out of going to the principal's office, or actually acting my way out of the principal's office that it was all a terrible misunderstanding between me and the math teacher or English teacher. But as an experience, stand-up was a challenge but...when it doesn't go well, it really doesn't go well.
Were you good?
I was good at impressions. That was the thing that I found myself falling into. I was doing Johnny Carson, Jimmy Stewart, and watching in those clubs Robin Williams, Jay Leno, all those guys who've gone on to bigger things. I was such a little punk and I'd get up on amateur night. I was doing other venues as well, like bowling alleys. They'd have talent contests at the Canoga Bowl at midnight, and you slowly realized as you were standing there, hearing nothing but the noise of bowling pins being knocked over, that people who are in bowling alleys at midnight don't watch Johnny Carson (laughs).
You truly had humble beginnings, it sounds like.
That and working at the shoe store to try and get enough gas money to go around to these different clubs...it's just a tough life. Somewhere there is a tape of a pilot of a potential ABC stand-up show where comedians got up one after the other. It was based on a British series that never aired. We did a pilot and I sort of hosted it. I was about 19, I think, but never got a tape of it and never saw it. So maybe if someone out there reading this has a copy, they'll be nice enough to send it to me! Boy, that seems like a long time ago...
Tell me about Julliard.
First of all, New York City hits you like a wave of steel. Julliard was an extraordinarily intense, competitive place. It's an experience I'm enormously grateful for because it taught me so much. Many of the people there I'm still close with and many of my teachers there still work with me. I have this sort of long relationship with the school that's continued. But, I was very anxious to work. And I decided in the middle of my second year that I wasn't sure if I was going to stick out the full four years, and I ultimately chose not to, although I'm convinced that had I chosen to stay, they would've thrown me out the door anyway.
Why is that?
I didn't fit into a certain idea of the program. I was making a lot of choices that were creating some degree of tension. I mean I wasn't being a bastard and I wasn't obstructing anything, I was making choices a bout which classes I'd go to. Instead of going to class sometimes I'd rehearse plays. Whatever it was I felt that I'd gone there to learn, I somehow felt that I had. I felt it was time to move on, even though I had no agent, no money, no prospects and I was now a Julliard drop-out. It didn't take too long to get that job in the park. There have been many times in my life when I've made a decision to leave someplace, even though it's a risk, it just feels right. It's been a real pattern in my life where I'll get to place and just...go! And I enjoy it because it keeps giving me new stuff to live off and new experiences and new people to come in contact with and allows me to keep re-defining myself and my world. The downside is you take a risk and some things suffer when you make choice like that. Some people don't understand those kinds of choices.
You did extensive theater work in the 80's, both on Broadway and regionally. Tell me what the best experience was and the worst experience was.
I think one of the best experiences I remember from regional theater was going to the Williamstown (PA.) Theater Festival one summer and doing this brand new play by Trevor Griffiths called Real Dreams, about the SDS student movement in the U.S. in 1969. The entire cast found this house in Williamstown and lived this sort of commune life together. Trevor came over from England and directed the play. It was the last play I did on the road, after three years of doing various plays all over, before deciding it was time to go back to New York. This was the one that made me feel I was ready to play in the leagues I wanted to play in. I just remember that summer as being a really creative, argumentative, stimulating, time. Even the play was stimulating. In Williamstown there's American flags on every other porch and many people there perceived it as being an anti-American play, which of course it wasn't. So it became the best of thinking man's theater. There were huge arguments between people in the lobby during intermission...and you just sort of went 'Wow! This is fucking intense!" It was a wonderful experience. A great group of people. And Trevor was very into Tai-Chi. And Trevor would start every morning by doing Tai-Chi with all 16 actors on the front lawn of the house we were living in. Everyone thought we were just nuts! Just bananas. Next to Barrie Keefe, Trevor is one of the most extraordinary writers. The worst...was when I was understudying an actor in a play at the Kennedy Center and just hating it. Never got to go on. Was grateful to have the work, but it was frustrating and I was just thinking "What the fuck am I doing with my life?!" But, that's all part of the journey, you know? I just remember being very depressed and very lonely, very vulnerable and feeling like I had no future (laughs).
Then Mike Nichols gave you your first big break in New York.
Right. I had actually been back in New York for three months, auditioning non-stop and landed an off-Broadway play that I ultimately didn't stay with. There was something that told me that wasn't the play to come back to New York with. So I asked to be let go of it and within that same two week period, I went in and auditioned for the national tour of The Real Thing, by Tom Stoppard. Nichols was going to take it on the road with Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons. And I'll never forget this. It was at the Plymouth Theater and Mike Nichols came down to the edge of the stage and called me over and said "What's your name again?" I had just gotten done auditioning. "That was very interesting. I'm going to suggest a very odd thing: have you seen a play called Hurlyburly? I've directed that as well and I'd like you to go see that play and next week, I'd like you to audition for that play because I'm in the process of replacing actors, getting understudies, and so on." So I went to the play, which was by David Rabe, and had Bill Hurt, Harvey Keitel, Chris Walken, Judith Ivey and Sigourney Weaver in the cast. I watched the play and I thought, "Who in the hell could he possibly want me to play?" I was considerably younger than anyone else in the play at that time. Then I got this message that they wanted me to audition for Phil, who was being played by Keitel. Now Phil, in the play, is an out of work actor who is kind of like a thug. This guy's got to look like he can beat the shit out of anyone on stage. And at that point I was very sort of tenuous about my ability to be able to do that. But Nichols was insistent and I auditioned and he offered me the opportunity to either do the national tour of The Real Thing, or stay in New York and stand-by or understudy in Hurlyburly. So I decided to stay in New York and I started rehearsing and literally got thrown up on stage one night when someone wasn't available...eventually Ron Silver, who was playing the role of Mickey by this time, left the show to do a miniseries in Canada. And one night Mr. Nichols was at the show, came back stage, and said to me "That was really good. How soon could you learn Mickey?" I said "What?" He said "You were really, really good as Phil, but I think you'd be really good as Mickey." So then I found myself playing Mickey, which I played longer than any other role, and later on I played Eddie (the other male lead)! I mean I became like the pinch hitter! If he could've gotten me to play any of the women, I know he probably would have! I was understudying all the men in the play and, I kid you not, it would happen that I'd show up on a Friday night and play Phil and on a Saturday night play Mickey. It's a dialogue-heavy play. There's a huge party scene that starts off the second act. Very often when there would be a pause, and I wouldn't know if it was me or not who was supposed to be speaking, I'd think "Who am I playing?" I'd have to look at my costume and say "Oh, I'm Phil today! It must be me. Where are we?" But for me, it was the greatest training to get thrown up on a Broadway stage, not having your name out there. It was a great way to come back to New York. And it was after that, just toward the end of the run, that I got a phone call from Mr. Nichols, and he said "What are you doing this summer?" And I said "Let me run through my imaginary calendar of events and see. Oh, I'm free!" "Well, I'm going to do a little film and I thought maybe you should come and read for it." "Well what is it?" "Well I'm just doing this little movie with Meryl and Jack." And I'm thinking, he doesn't mean that Meryl and that Jack, does he? And so he cast me and I played this mugger on a subway. On my first day of shooting my first film, it was on my birthday and I was absolutely terrified. It was shot on the subway at 42nd street. It sweltering hot and I had to wink at Meryl Streep and I couldn't do it! Mike was like "Just calm down. Just relax." We had a great experience. He's a real force in my life and a real mentor and we became friends and I hope to work with him again some day. He's a truly extraordinary man.
He's one of my favorite directors, also. In school, I took a class where we intensively studied Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Do you know the story about Virginia Woolf? Mike was doing one of the first early screenings of the film for friends, and Henry Fonda was there. At the end of the movie, Fonda comes up to him and says "That was the most extraordinary thing I've ever seen. They never give me th ese kinds of parts." Nichols' jaw dropped and he said "Are you kidding? I offered you this part for a year and your agent said you turned it down." And apparently Fonda went directly to a pay phone and called his agents, who were MCA at the time, and fired them right there over the phone! I love that story.
You have a real chameleon quality in your work. There are movies I watch where I completely forget I'm watching Kevin Spacey, whereas with conventional "movie stars," they always seem to be playing themselves continuously.
Well that's the point. You look at guys like Fonda, Stewart and Tracy, they had this incredible range, despite the fact...that Jimmy Stewart was Jimmy Stewart. I always have had the feeling that, probably because this was the way I was raised from my first beginnings as an actor, I'd read a play and say "God this is an incredible play! This part, this character is so amazing! I would love to be that person! This is a person I'm not. I wish I had that degree of courage, that degree of intelligence, I wish I was that complex!" So the idea always form early on was to serve that. That's the job. Take that idea as a sort of vessel, or spy, your job is to get that information across the border. That's why doing L.A. Confidential was, for me, a first step in a direction where I'm going to do many, many different kinds of things.
Let's talk about L.A. Confidential. I think it's some of your best work ever.
Thank you. The thing that attracted me to it was that it was really all about character. These three amazing characters. We didn't want the look of the film, or the costumes or the recreation of the time to be the main focus of the film, which is what a lot of recent films set in the past have really wound up doing. This film was really about these three people. And Jack Vincennes was this guy who was not bad, but kind of shady. And not necessarily involved in something evil, but the stuff is a little dicey. And slowly you start to realize that this guy is not particularly comfortable with where he's at. The great twist is that he actually turns out to have a conscience. But I think that the film is really going to catapault Russell Crowe, Guy Pierce, and Curtis Hanson to the fame that they all deserve. Curtis and I have been trying to do something together for 12 years. He's a tremendously talented guy, a brilliant director and I think L.A. Confidential will prove that to the rest of the world, as well.
Let's talk about The Usual Suspects. Did you guys have any idea that it was going to be the phenomenon that it was?
I guess not. I was a little bit more in the dark maybe than most of the actors, because I didn't go to dailies. (Director) Bryan (Singer) and I decided early on that it would be better for him and for me not to start second-guessing what was coming across because there were too many levels of subtlety and if I started going to dailies and thinking "Oh, that didn't work" I might start pushing it in another way...and skewer the organic nature of how we were going. That was the first time I stopped going to dailies and other than my own film (Albino Alligator) I haven't gone since. I think it's dangerous because you wind up falling in love with moments that might wind up not being in the movie, and who wants to go through that frustration. So I was really protected by that process and put myself completely in Bryan's hands...I was at a place where I'd played a series of slightly more bombastic characters. And I felt that I needed, as an actor, to play something quieter. Because when they first approached me with the script, they didn't tell me what part they wanted me to do, although they'd written Verbal with me in mind, because they knew that I don't like to know that going in. I just want to focus on the story. Then if there's one particular character that I respond to, I'll let them know that and make the embarrassing mistake of choosing the character that, they tell me, Tom Hanks is playing (laughs). But no, there was no way to know. I was confused by it, but I thought it was the most brilliant screenplay. Then when I went and saw it...I was absolutely dazzled. And to give you an idea that none of us really knew what we had, Gabriel Byrne came to that screening convinced he was Kyser Söse! (laughs) I remember at the end of the screening seeing Gabriel and Bryan over in a corner having this heated argument! To me, that was what was going to make it a lasting film. It doesn't hand you anything on a silver platter. It makes you work. I feel that way about L.A. Confidential, too. So, I want to do another film with Bryan...if we can find something that really motivates both of us. He is, without question, someone who's going to be around at the top of his profession for a very long time.
Tell me about Swimming With Sharks. A lot of people view that as a training film that should be watched by all college grads heading for Hollywood.
I read that script when I was in London, working on Looking for Richard. I fell off the bed in my hotel room, while I was reading it. It was so brilliant. It's really an examination of ambition in our society. The most memorable screening I went to of that was when I took it to Washington D.C. and showed it to the White House staff, congressional aides, and senator's assistants. And there was this massive pouring of people coming at me after that screening saying "You don't understand, I work for Senator So-and-So and this is my fucking life!" (laughs) And several high-level people said to me that after seeing it they'd never treat their assistants the same again. So I'm glad we had a global effect with it (laughs). I'm very proud of that film, not only because it's so potent, but because we made it for $950,000 in 18 days, and it doesn't necessarily look that way. So, it can be done.
How was it working on Glengarry Glen Ross with all those powerhouse actors?
It was really because of Al Pacino that I got that part. He'd seen me in this play in New York...We treated the rehearsal process very much like a play. We rehearsed for three weeks...and it was funny how we all started to take on the characteristics of our parts during the filming. I was thinking that I had no right to be there, that I was a stooge, that I was going to be found out at any moment, definitely going to be fired because, you know, there were all these fuckin' guys--Pacino, Ed Harris, Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin--and I'm the guy they all hate! And let me tell you, it's really convincing when actors of that caliber call you a "pussy." (laughs) I was so depressed! It's such a great piece and a great story. But sometimes when you're doing a really int ense piece, it helps to have some levity on the set, so we were all playing jokes on each other. The one that was played on me, I don't know if you remember the scene where I storm out of my office and yell at Arkin to go to lunch? It was finally time for my close-up. And little did I know that Pacino had arranged for everyone in the cast and crew to, once I had gone back in my office and shut the door, leave the set! And only the camera was there rolling alone. So I storm out of the door yelling "Will you go...to..." to just total emptiness! And I yelled "You assholes!" And there was laughter just echoing from everywhere and everyone!
Walk me through Oscar night through the eyes of a nominee and then a winner.
You go through a lot of emotions. I went through a lot having to do with my family and the fact that my father had passed away very recently, before that night. My mother was able to be there with me, because without them, without my mother in particular, I don't think I would've amounted to much. There's so many things you go through because you grow up watching the Oscars, so you have a perception about it, then suddenly you find yourself on the other side of it. I remember when I did my very first talk show, and it was Johnny Carson and I did it with Johnny. And I used to go to The Tonight Show almost every night, five nights a week when I could get tickets. And watching him live every night. And then years later when I was promoting a TV movie I was doing, he had me on and then suddenly there I was, feeling...reversed! I was always used to looking at Johnny on the right, then suddenly here I was looking at him on the left! And there was this audience and these lights and much smaller than I thought. So it was a little like that, driving in a limo on the way to the ceremony, watching the pre-Oscar show on a TV in the limo and I remember saying to my mom "We used to watch this at home!"
It's a little like being Alice on the other side of the looking glass?
Completely. And just not wanting to fall down the hole! So the evening is just sort of fraught with memories and it's history, so you think "What am I doing here?!" And like on the set of Glengarry, "When are they going to discover I'm a complete fraud and escort me out of here?!" (laughs) I hadn't started to think about what I would say until the night before. I had been working on Albino every day and the night before I came up with something...then when you actually hear your name called the next night, your mind just goes completely blank. You have no memory of what you say, at all. It's a very emotional moment. Then you go out and face a phalanx of photographers and reporters and then I went right back to work the next day. I was back on the dubbing stage at 9:30 a.m. with Per Hallberg, who'd also won that night for sound design with Braveheart. We brought our Oscars, set them on the console, intimidated the mixers and said "Let's get to work." And we worked a long day that day. And that was the best way to do it.
Tell me a little about working with Mr. Eastwood.
(Imitating him) Mr. Zen Director? He is very careful about not over-intellectualizing. So there's not very much conversation about the work. There's a great deal of conversation about other things. He makes you feel like you know more about the part than he does. Any idea or feeling you have about the part, he's open to. I think he's smart enough to always leave himself room to get out if the idea doesn't work. It's the most relaxed, fast, easygoing set I've ever been on. Nobody's yelling "Quiet!" "Action!" "Cut!" "Shut up!" He doesn't say "Action!" He doesn't say "Cut!" He says "Stop" sometimes, which cracks me up. You very often don't know if you're rolling or not, which is very interesting. I think his way of making a film is very collaborative in an unannounced way. He makes every department be responsible for itself, including the actors. He fills you with confidence. He only does a few takes usually, so you'd better be ready, and that's in every department.
Albino Alligator was your first directorial effort. What's your advice for first-time directors?
There is no job and there is no book and there is nobody who can prepare you for what it will be like, I suspect because every experience is different. I was fortunate to have worked with enough directors, some of them first-timers, where I was able to observe. We have this unusual job, as actors, where we get to watch other people do what we do. And that includes if you have aspirations to direct, you get to watch directors. So I watched on a lot of film sets and took notes and observed...made notes about the kind of environment I wanted, how I wanted to treat people, how I wanted people to treat each other and the work. And I also had the opportunity to call directors that I admired who would actually take my phone calls. Sidney Lumet was one of the first calls I made. I thought "Well, here's a man whose first film took place in one room, 12 Angry Men." And we talked about differen
t ways to establish claustrophobia cinematically. He was a huge help. Gave me lots of great pointers. I wanted to start my first experience as a director on something that was small and action-driven. I had a wonderful time and was blessed with a great cast and crew. It did very well overseas, much better than it did here.
What I really liked about it was that you shot it in a very straightforward way, without pumping it up with fancy shots. I have to say I'm getting burned out on the whole MTV style of filmmaking.
I feel the same way with a lot of the films I see. I went into Albino knowing on a certain level that a lot of people might go see it because I directed it. But at a certain point, I wanted the audience to forget who directed and wanted my hands to just sort of lay off. Often I go to a film and can feel a director's hands all over it, and maybe not trusting the story or the actors. I just wanted to see as an experiment for myself if I could lay back. I'm pretty pleased because I feel that I kind of disappeared a little bit with that film.
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