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).
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
s 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 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
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 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.
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
