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His wife Sandra Dee (played by Kate Bosworth) was a far bigger star than Bobby in the very early sixties. The film suggests otherwise. How come? "Well, you’re right," spacey responds. "I think for three or four years she was one of the biggest box office stars in the States. But I didn’t set out to tell the Sandra Dee story. I set out to tell the Bobby Darin story, of which she is a large part. There’s no doubt that when Bobby went off to make Come September (the 1961 film in which they co-starred and first met), he had seen her on magazine covers. I think he targeted her. I think he thought what a great marriage that would make. I think he was surprised when he ended up falling in love with her, They were two people both deeply sheltered by their families, she by a mother who was overly protective. She was also so much younger than him; he found out on their wedding night that she was only seventeen. They didn’t have a lot in common except for the fact that they fell in love. It’s always difficult when you’re making a film about somebody to know what an audience is going to accept, you want the character to be likeable. But I wasn’t afraid to show Bobby as difficult, arrogant, and insensitive, particularly in his relationship to her. At the same time, I had to be smart about how much of her story I was going to tell. I hope you’ll forgive me."
Beyond The Sea surprisingly has much in common with the smash Broadway success, the Boy From Oz, which of course features Hugh Jackman as Australian musical icon Peter Allen; both share the conceit of the adult star coming to terms with his teenage self.
"Someone told me about this, but I was never aware of it," Spacey responds. "My bigger influence was the musical Nine, which oddly enough is where I found William Ullrich, who plays little Bobby. He played little Guido opposite Antonio Banderas in the Broadway production. The reason I used him was because Bobby Darin had said several times in his lifetime that he felt like two people. Walden Robert Cassotto (Darin’s birth name) had spent half his life trying to become Bobby Darin and Bobby Darin spent the rest of his life trying to get back to Walden Robert Cassotto. That to me was a very compelling comment about the duality and the struggle between these two forces. So that’s why I decided to use the boy as his muse almost."
Getting back to the Old Vic, what does he hope to achieve? "I am excited at the idea of running a theatre because I believe an enormous amount can be accomplished and I can use what has happened for me in films as a magnet not just for actors, directors and writers, but I hope for a whole new audience that wouldn’t necessarily come to the theatre otherwise. There’s been a bit of misreporting about the theatre having been some kind of failure and that I’m riding in on a white horse and saving it, which is a bit of a disservice to the people who have been working there for the last five years doing major productions that have been selling out; the theatre has actually been running at a profit since we redesigned the board in 1998, so it’s been doing quite well."
Has he any misgivings about living in England? "There’s nothing I don’t like about London," Spacey laughs. "And I don’t mind the weather either. I can understand people who live there all the time complaining about the weather, but that’s like people who complain about never being able to get off the isle of Manhattan. I live a life that allows me to go to other places, so I always have something to compare cities to, and I never get stuck in one place for long. Clearly I’ll be there six or more months out of the year running a theatre, but whatever downside there may be, there’s a huge upside. I’ve been going to London since I was six or seven years old. My parents took trips to London. I saw my first plays at the Old Vic when I was that age."
Is that when he decided to become an actor? "My parents say I was born an actor," Spacey laughs. "There were a series of things that I did as a youngster that my parents frowned upon, and for which I was duly reprimanded. So I punished the punishers and kept going. My parents sent me to military school which I didn’t take to well. I didn’t like violence, and it was a very violent atmosphere. So I was happy when I was kicked out, although it puzzled me that the week I was kicked out, I won the leadership medal, so figure that out. In any event, Out of a very troubled and difficult time when I was not happy, I discovered theatre. But there are so many examples of people from difficult, humble beginnings who have made extraordinary lives for themselves. Not that mine was difficult, but it was mine."
© 2000 - 2006 Driving Mr. Spacey!
