Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life

The following is a conversation with Kevin Spacey, a two-time Oscar-winning actor, who has starred in Se7en, The Usual Suspects, American Beauty, and House of Cards. He is one of the greatest actors ever, creating haunting performances of characters who often embody the dark side of human nature. Seven years ago, he was cut from House of Cards, and canceled by Hollywood and the world, when Anthony Rapp made an allegation that Kevin Spacey sexually abused him in 1986. Anthony Rapp then filed a civil lawsuit seeking $40 million. In this trial and all civil and criminal trials that followed, Kevin was acquitted. He has never been found guilty nor liable in the court of law.

You played a serial killer in the movie, Se7en. Your performance was one of, if not the greatest, portrayal of a murderer on screen ever. What was your process of becoming him, John Doe, the serial killer. The truth is, I didn't get the part. I had been in Los Angeles making a couple of films, Swimming With Sharks and Usual Suspects, and then I did a film called Outbreak, that Morgan Freeman was in, and I went to audition for David Fincher, in probably late November of '94. And I auditioned for this part, and didn't get it, and I went back to New York, and I think they started shooting like December 12th.

So I got on a plane on that Sunday and I flew to Los Angeles, and I went into where they were shooting, and I went into the makeup room and David Fincher was there, and we were talking about what should I do? How should I look? And I just had my hair short for Outbreak, because I was playing a military character, and I just looked at the hairdresser and I said, do you have a razor? And Fincher went, "Are you kidding?" And I said, "No." He goes, "If you shave your head, I'll shave mine." So we both shaved our heads, and then I started shooting the next day. So my long-winded answer to your question is that I didn't have that much time to think about how to build that character. What I think in the end, Fincher was able to do so brilliantly, with such terror, was to set the audience up to meet this character.

I guess what you're saying is, it's extremely difficult to get to the bottom of a little less, because the power, if we just stick even on Se7en, of your performances, in the tiniest of subtleties, like when you say, "Oh, you didn't know," and you turn your head a little bit, and a little bit, maybe a glimmer of a smile appears in your face. That's subtlety, that's less, that's hard to get to, I suppose. Yeah, and also because I so well remember, I think the work that Brad did, and also Morgan did in that scene, but the work that Brad had to do where he had to go ... I remember rehearsing with him as we were all staying at this little hotel nearby that location, and we rehearsed the night before we started shooting that sequence, and it was just incredible to see the levels of emotions he had to go through, and then the decision of, "What do I do, because if I do what he wants me to do, then he wins. But if I don't do it, then what kind of a man, husband am I?" I just thought he did really incredible work. So it was also not easy to not react to the power of what he was throwing at me. I just thought it was a really extraordinary scene.

David Fincher said about you ... he was talking in general, I think, but also specifically in the moment of House of Cards ... said that you have exceptional skill, both as an actor and as a performer, which he says are different things. So he defines the former as dramatization of a text, and the latter as the seduction of an audience. Do you see wisdom in that distinction? And what does it take to do both the dramatization of a text and the seduction of an audience?

To ask the interesting question. I like the poetry and the humility of, "I'm just a series of colors in someone else's painting." That was a good line. That said, you've talked about improvisation. You said that it's all about the ability to do it again and again and again, and yet never make it the same, and you also just said that you're trying to stay true to the text. So where's the room for the improvisation, that it's never the same? Well, there's two slightly different contexts, I think. One is, in the rehearsal room, improvisation could be a wonderful device. Sam Mendes, for example, will start, he'll start a scene and he does this wonderful thing. He brings rugs and he brings chairs and sofas in, and he says, "Well, let's put two chairs here and here. You guys, let's start in these chairs, far apart from each other. Let's see what happens with the scene if you're that far apart." And so we'll do the scene that way.

Okay, that's great. That's good to know. You also said interesting line that improvisation helps you learn about the character. Can you explain that? So through maybe playing with the different ways of saying the words or the different ways to bring the words to life, you get to learn about yourself, about the character you're playing. It can be helpful, but improv is, I'm such a big believer in the writing and in serving the writing and doing the words the writer wrote that improv for me, unless you're just doing comedy, and I mean, I love improv in comedy. It's brilliant. So much fun to watch people just come up with something right there. But that's where you're looking for laughs and you're specifically in a little scene that's being created. But I think improv has had value, but I have not experienced it as much in doing plays as I have sometimes in doing film where you'll start off rehearsing and a director may say, "Let's just go off book and see what happens." And I've had moments in film where someone went off book and it was terrifying.

And I got the part. Well, I didn't quite get the part they were going to bring together the actors that they thought they were going to give the parts to on a Saturday at Al's office. And they asked me if I would come and do a read through. And I said, "Who's going to be there?" And they said, "Well, so and so and so and so," and Jack Lemmon is flying in. And I said, "Don't tell Mr. Lemmon that I'm doing the read through. Is that possible?" They were like, "Sure." So I'll never forget this. Jack was sitting in a chair and Pacino's office doing the New York Times crossword puzzle as he did every day. And I walked in the door and he went, "Oh, Jesus Christ, is it possible you could get a job without me? Jesus Christ, I'm so tired of holding up your end of it. Oh my God, Jesus." So I got the job because of Pacino, and it was really one of the first major roles that I ever had in a film to be working with that group-

I remember this, and I don't know if this will answer your question, but I think it's revealing about what he's able to do and what he was able to do and how that ultimately influenced what I was able to do. Sam Mendes had never directed a film before American Beauty. So what he did was he took the best elements of theater and applied them to the process. So we rehearsed it like a play in a sound stage where everything was laid out, like it would be in a play and this couch will be here. And he'd sent me a couple of tapes. He'd sent me two cassette tapes, one that he'd like to call pre-Lester before he begins to move in a new direction. And then post-Lester, and they just were different songs. And then he said to me one day, and I think always thought this was brilliant of Sam to use Lemmon knowing what Lemmon meant to me. He said, "When was the last time you watched The Apartment?" And I said, "I don't know. I mean, I love that movie so much." He goes, "I want you to watch it again and then let's talk." So I went and I watched the movie again, and we sat down and Sam said, "What Lemmon does in that film is incredible because there is never a moment in the movie where we see him change. He just evolves and he becomes the man he becomes because of the experiences that he has through the course of the film. But there's this remarkable consistency in who he becomes, and that's what I need you to do as Lester, I don't want the audience to ever see him change. I want him to evolve.

Mortality also permeates the film. It starts with acknowledging that death is on the way, that Lester's time is finite. You ever think about your own death? Yeah.

You said you feared death at your lowest point. What was the lowest point? It was November 1st, 2017 and then Thanksgiving Day of that same year.

So as you said, your darkest moment in 2017, when all of this went down, one of the things that happened is you were no longer on House of Cards for the last season. Let's go to the beginning of that show, one of the greatest TV series of all time, a dark fascinating character in Frank Underwood, a ruthless, cunning, borderline evil politician. What are some interesting aspects to the process you went through for becoming Frank Underwood? Maybe Richard III. There's a lot of elements there in your performance that maybe inspired that character. Is that fair or no? I'll give you one very interesting, specific education that I got in doing Richard III and closing that show at BAM in March of 2012, and two months later started shooting House of Cards. There is something called direct address. In Shakespeare you have Hamlet, talks to the world. But when Shakespeare wrote Richard III, it was the first time he created something called direct address, which is the character looks directly at each person close by. It is a different kind of sharing than when a character's doing a monologue. Opening of Henry IV. And while there are some people who believe that direct address was invented in Ferris Bueller, it wasn't. It was Shakespeare who invented it. So I had just had this experience every night in theaters all over the world, seeing how people reacted to becoming a co-conspirator, because that's what it's about. And what I tried to do and what Fincher really helped me with in those beginning days was how to look in that camera and imagine I was talking to my best friend.

I was going to mention when we're talking Seven, that just if you're looking at the greatest performances, portrayals of murderers. So obviously, like I mentioned, Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, that's up there. Seven to me is competing for first place with Silence of the Lambs. But then there's a different one with Kubrick and Jack Nicholson with The Shining. And there as opposed to a murderer who's always been a murderer, here's a person, like in American Beauty, who becomes that, who descends into madness. I read also that Jack Nicholson improvised, "Here's Johnny." In that scene. I believe that.

Oh, yeah. Your impression of him at the AFT is just great.

What was Christopher Walken like? So he's a theater guy too. Oh, yeah, he started out as a chorus boy, dancer.

Without judgment. In Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn famously writes about the line between good and evil, and that it runs to the heart of every man. So the full paragraph there when he talks about the line, "During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place, sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil, and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times, he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil." What do you think about this note, that we're all capable of good and evil, and throughout life that line moves and shifts throughout the day, throughout every hour?

Is there some elements of politics and maybe the private sector that are captured by House of Cards? How true to life do you think that is? From everything you've seen about politics, from everything you've seen about the politicians of this particular elections? I heard so many different reactions from politicians about House of Cards. Some would say, "Oh, it's not like that at all." And then others would say, "It's closer to the truth than anyone wants to admit." And I think I fall down on the side of that idea.