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The usual Spacey
‘Bobby Darin was accused of being arrogant, which he was. He didn’t want to get stuck in one thing. You could say I’ve experienced a bit of that myself. And you have to ask yourself: am I living my life for myself or to satisfy all these people who don’t really know me?’
Kevin Spacey is running late for lunch. We are meeting in his office at the Old Vic during a break from rehearsals for Richard II, so lunch is an egg and cheese sandwich, while his little black mongrel terrier, Minnie, yaps around my ankles.
Spacey is friendly, but wary, and speaks with great deliberation. The baritone voice is rich, unaffected by dedicated smoking. When the guard drops, rarely, he shows you a delightful grin. He leans back in his chair, arms spread wide behind his head. Audiences with Spacey are rare; he has had a difficult relationship with the press since he relocated to London. A few days after our interview, he held a press briefing for the new season but didn’t invite the tabloids.
“Nothing personal, but I made a film in Vancouver with Justin Timberlake and next thing I read I’m offering a role at the Old Vic to his girlfriend, Cameron Diaz. I meet Russell Crowe for dinner in Australia and suddenly I’m telling him to come here and save his career. They just make it all up,” he says.
More seriously, there was that curious incident of the dawn mugging in a south London park last year when a man ran off with his mobile phone, and the subsequent interview with his older brother in Idaho, who alleged their family was particularly dysfunctional and their father a neo-Nazi child-abuser. Spacey, who is not on speaking terms with his brother, but fond of his sister and her two children, has no comment, but while his eyes stay glazed, his jaw tightens. I’ve crossed a boundary.
He started acting at high school, where he changed his name from Fowler to Spacey (his mother’s maiden name). His swift Hollywood rise in the mid-nineties, when he made The Usual Suspects, LA Confidential and American Beauty, winning two Oscars, should not obscure the fact that, after two years of training at the Juillard School in New York, he started in theatre in 1981 and regards himself as a stage actor who makes movies.
He has just completed filming as Lex Luther in Superman Returns, which will be released next summer and is directed by Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects). Spacey leans back in his chair, fiddling with the sandwich wrapper and toying with a cigarette that remains unlit throughout the interview. “It is a good opportunity to reach a lot of new audiences who won’t have seen American Beauty or The Usual Suspects and that will all help the focus on this theatre.”
Some critics say his Hollywood career was skewed through bad choices after American Beauty, when he made a series of flops including K-Pax, Pay it Forward, The Shipping News and The Life of David Gale. Beyond the Sea, (about singer Bobby Darin) which he also directed, was a disappointment too.
“Bobby Darin was accused of being arrogant, which he was. He didn’t want to get stuck in one thing. People wanted him the way they discovered him. Well, you know, you could say I’ve experienced a tiny bit of all that myself. And you have to ask yourself: am I living my life for myself or to satisfy all these people who don’t really know me?”
Certainly, when he was announced as Richard II, I assumed it was a misprint for Richard III, a character whose dark, gleeful malevolence is much more up his sidewalk.
It occurs to me that the solitariness of Richard is something Spacey must relish. You get the distinct impression of a private, secret man who is similar to the restless loner he portrays in many of his films. Our time is up and he gathers up his script — tiny, reduced pages of text stuck on to address cards — and stuffs them in an inside pocket.
Spacey is heartbroken over the tragedy in New Orleans. I wonder if he feels the American military might be more usefully deployed there than in Iraq. “There seems to have been a break-down in preparedness but what we hear is that it’s all under control, everything’s going to be fine. It’s the same kind of rhetoric we hear in respect of where our soldiers are. I’m not sure people still buy it. There is now, I believe, a genuine groundswell in the United States of people asking a lot of questions. All I can say is, we’re a couple of years away from change.”
The Old Vic is entirely unsubsidised, although Spacey believes the government really should step up and secure the fabric of the Grade II listed building, which he says has never been fixed since the wartime bombing. He raises money, goes to functions, turns up at parties, beats the drum. Quite a social life, then?
“I don’t believe that someone I meet at a party is my friend. I read a lot about how I’m hanging out with all these people. But I’m not. Most of my friends, here and in New York, are nothing to do with the theatre.” —Dawn/The Observer News Service
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