Kevin Spacey is an actor capable of disappearing into his roles


Kevin Spacey is an actor's actor, an artist capable of disappearing into his roles, as brilliantly illustrated in his noir-nasty performance for The Usual Suspects (1995). He started in the theater and did not jump to cinema until he was almost 30 years old. Kevin Spacey Fowler was born in South Orange, New Jersey, and his father's job as a technical writer took the family all over the country. They finally settled in southern California, where Kevin proved to be a bit of a problem.

After being sent to the Northridge Military Academy, he was soon expelled for attacking a classmate. Subsequently enrolled at Chatsworth High School, he was active in the theater, playing Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music his senior year. After a short period at Los Angeles Valley College, he left and enrolled in the drama program at Juilliard. Two years later, he left Juilliard and went to work with the New York Shakespeare Festival.

In 1981, he appeared in Henry VI and the next year made his Broadway debut in Ibsen's Ghosts. He would later star onstage in David Rabe's Hurlyburly (he also appeared in the film adaptation of 1998), NEIL SIMON's Lost in Yonkers (he won a Tony Award in 1991 for his performance as Uncle Louie in that play), and Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, for which he received a Tony nomination.

Kevin Spacey's film career began with Heartburn (1986), in which he played a subway thief. The role, however, that first brought him wide public attention was Mel Profitt in The Wise Guys television series. He went on to specialize in "heavy" roles as a character actor: He played a sadistic Hollywood executive in Swimming with Sharks (1994), for example, and he played the unforgettable and aptly named Verbal Kint in The Usual Suspects (1995), winning a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for that role.

Kevin Spacey was particularly distinctive as Williamson, the office sales manager, in James Foley's film adaptation of DAVID MAMET's Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), more than able to hold his own against the scene-stealing talents of JACK LEMMON and AL PACINO. Arguably, Kevin Spacey is at his best in small ensemble pictures, such as The Big Kahuna (1999), adapted by Roger Reuff from his play Hospitality Suite, a satire in which Kevin Spacey played another salesman, this time pitching products at a conference in Wichita, Kansas.

But Kevin Spacey is no doubt best known for his performances in much bigger pictures, such as American Beauty (1999), playing Lester Burnham, a burnt-out midlevel advertising executive who tries to cope with a dysfunctional family and his own midlife crisis. Kevin Spacey had found the perfect role here, as was evident by his awesome performance, which won him an Academy Award as Best Actor. In 1995, Kevin Spacey won the New York Film Critics award as Best Supporting Actor and the MTV Movie Award as Best Villain for his performance in David Fincher's Se7en, playing a serial killer obsessed by the seven deadly sins.

After 1999's American Beauty, his film career began to sputter: He costarred with Helen Hunt and childstar Haley Joel Osment in Pay It Forward (2000), a gentle movie directed by Mimi Leder that grossed only slightly more than $30 million. Kevin Spacey also starred in K-PAX (2001), an alien-visitation movie, with Kevin Spacey playing both the friendly alien and the human being whose body it inhabits. Though the plot strains credulity, Kevin Spacey's performance did not. Nonetheless, it was neither a critical nor a commercial success.

Kevin Spacey played Quoyle, the lead character in the film adaptation of Annie Proulx's Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, The Shipping News (2001), as a man who has to come to terms with his family's past in Newfoundland. The movie was a flop, but Kevin Spacey earned nominations as Best Actor from the British Academy (BAFTA) and the Golden Globes.

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