There are not many people, I say, who could say as much. "I know. But while I've been working, I've also been watching, seeing how people respond to what happens to them--in terms of success or non-success."
This, he suggests, has not provided an altogether happy spectacle. "How many times do you say to yourself about someone who you once thought was interesting, whatever happened to them? And I know that when that happens it's because I feel that someone has taken advantage of the opportunities they've been given and just run to the bank. That's the thing that I always find distasteful."
Who, I ask, has disappointed you? Spacey frowns. "The bigger question is, who hasn't? It's a much smaller list. No, actually, there are quite a few who haven't. But when I grew up I was lucky enough to have discovered people like Henry Fonda, Spencer Tracy. Those were the people I grew up watching. The greats who remained great; who didn't disappoint."
All of this merely confirms your suspicion that Spacey regards acting less as a job than a higher calling. He talks earnestly of the "responsibility" of being an actor and director; the obligation "to honour that role, not to take advantage of it"; of the moral imperative of putting the work before the career.
"1 think it's important for an actor not to get seduced by the elements of a film--who else is
in it? What percentage points am I on? The point is not what this part is going to do for me, but what is this story going to do for us. That's what our job is." For this reason, he says, he has tried to make it a policy to read scripts without knowing which role the producers want him to play."There's a terrible temptation as you move up in the business to think, oh that's a good monologue, as if your role is more important than anything else. But the function of an actor is, first and foremost, to serve the writer; and if you serve the writer, and understand the world the writer has created, then you will ultimately serve yourself, because you'll be on the right track. If I respond to the story, then I'll want to pursue it. If I don't respond to the story, then I shouldn't get near it."
His work to date has borne out the success of the theory. When he first read the script for The Usual Suspects, he says, he had no idea which part the producers had in mind for him. "I just knew I wanted to do the film. I called Bryan [Singer, the film's director], and he said, is there any part you like? I said the character of Verbal is the one I'm most attracted to. And it turned out that was the one they'd written for me, because they knew my work from the stage."
The background to his role in Seven, playing a serial killer pursued by Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt, suggests an even more idiosyncratic approach to the question of casting. Spacey says he accepted the role on the condition that his name did not appear on the billing.
"When I read the script I thought, OK, here's a character that for half the movie, you don't think the police are ever going to catch. You don't know who he is. He's a frightening, unseen presence. I said to my agent, by the time this movie opens, Swimming With Sharks and The Usual Suspects will both be out, so my screen persona might be higher than it is today. So if I'm an audience member and I'm sitting through the opening credits of the movie, and there's Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman and presumably I would have been the next name after the title, and it's a movie about the two of them chasing this serial killer, and I don't show up for the first 30 minutes, who do you think I'm playing?"
"So I thought, let's not tip off the audience. Then maybe the tension of whether they'll ever catch the killer will be greater than it is already ."
On the one hand, this shows a commendable selflessness in the interests of the film at large. On the other, it should be remembered that when the serial killer finally appears on screen, there is only one question in the minds of the audience: who's the guy playing him? For Kevin Spacey, not having billing turned out to be a very good career move. "It also meant for me that I got to be in a movie that has made $400 million worldwide, and I didn't have to do a single interview with the press." Spacey's tone suggests this may have been the biggest blessing of all.
He is as guarded on the subject of his life off the screen as he is eloquent about his life on it, which can make him an extremely elusive man to interview. He is prepared, for example, to tell you that he lives in New York, but not which part of New York. By the end of our conversation I have no more idea of whether Spacey is single, married or a monastic celibate than I did at the beginning. The closest he comes to any kind of revelation about his personal life is when I ask what he thinks about as his head hits the pillow last thing at night.
"When is she coming to bed..." He laughs. Who is she? "Ah..." He arches an eyebrow. "You never know..
Spacey offers an actor's justification for his reticence. 'Personality' journalism, the public's inexhaustible appetite for tittle-tattle and trivia about an actor's personal life, the cult of celebrity...all of these things are not only invasive, a violation of privacy; on a more pragmatic level they make it harder for an actor to convince an audience of the role he is playing on screen. "The job of the actor is to convince people that you're somebody else for a couple of hours and the more I'm out there yapping, the less my ability to do that becomes successful."
He shifts in his chair. "Let me put it this way. I never knew f*** all about Spencer Tracy; I didn't know a thing about Henry Fonda. I believed that they were the people they were acting. I don't want to know anything about the actors I see on screen except their performance. I'm not going to complain about suddenly having found myself a public figure, but I will say there is a time and a place. I show up at a premiere, hey baby take my picture...But I truly believe that no amount of verbiage that I carry on about in the course of a conversation, or that gets written about me, means anything at all."
There is a darker side to this argument. More than ever before, the lives of film stars have become the stuff of public speculation and private fantasy. The Internet has provided an electronic grapevine to feed the obsessive. While filming A Time to Kill" with Sandra Bullock, Spacey says, the Net would be filled with reams of gossip and innuendo-- presumably posted by extras working on the film--about the relationship between him and Bullock, "all of it complete fabrication. The Internet has become the place where anybody can write anything about whomever they like, with impunity, and that's dangerous."
Since the murder of the television actress Rebecca Schaeffer by a stalker in 1989, Hollywood at large has become infected with a paranoia about the invasiveness of fans Madonna, Michael J. Fox and Jodie Foster are just three actors who have been prey to obsessives.
The nature of his most recognizable roles--sinister, mysterious or flat out psycho--has meant that Spacey has also attracted the attention of cranks who, he says, his voice heavy with irony, "believe they need to save me." It is not a subject he is comfortable with, and he soon steers the conversation back to acting. Cranks, his attitude suggests, are like press interviews, even like Academy Awards. They come with the territory , but they're not the territory itself .
"My reasons for wanting to be an actor haven't changed. What's changed is the public recognition--neither of which bothers me. You have to remember, always, the important thing is the work." His father, he says, worked all his life writing technical manuals and nobody sang his praises for that. But he also wrote fiction. After his death three years ago, Spacey had the opportunity to go through his notebooks. "Even though we were close, it was like meeting someone I didn't know. He never let anybody read his work while he was alive." Spacey shakes his head thinking of this. His family were not wealthy, he says, and sacrifices were made to enable him to pursue his interest in acting. "When I started drama school my mother used to leave work early, drive me to acting class, go for a coffee somewhere, come back and pick me up, take me on to another class. She wasn't a stage mother, pushing me. I wanted to do these things. I owe her a lot."
So having her accompany you to the Academy Awards was by way of a thank you? "It meant a great deal to her to be there. And it meant a great deal to me." He laughed. "It upset a couple of people, but I was very proud to have my mother on my arm." This, I thought, shows character.
By Mick Brown; The Daily Telegraph, August 9, 1997
