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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
The enigmatic actor's roles embody manipulation and cunning.
Sep 10, 1999 | Answering the cheesy 1997 Esquire cover story "Kevin Spacey Has a Secret" in the current Playboy, Spacey declares that the rumor that he's gay "is not true. It's a lie." Would it matter even to the most hidebound among us if Spacey had said he were gay? Spacey is a fearless, mischievous performer, not a moldy, homespun icon. He's equally at home in a Eugene O'Neill play or on "Saturday Night Live," where he did convulsive imitations of Christopher Walken trying out for Han Solo and Jack Lemmon auditioning for Chewbacca. And he's made lewd ambiguity one of his big-screen trademarks, ever since he played Henry Miller's roommate in "Henry and June" (1990) with the nonstop leer of a polymorphously perverse Cheshire cat.
Expansive and ironic, Spacey is the emblematic actor of a paradoxical age. Eloquent and elemental, he represents all the men and women who face limitless sexual, emotional and professional options -- but find little wiggle-room in their careers and family life. His venal characters tend to be uncanny manipulators. His virtuous ones are soul survivors. Yet even when he takes on bourgeois roles, he veers away from the mainstream middle-class maleness of a conventional crowd-pleaser like Tom Hanks. When Spacey limns a suburban husband and father, as he does in the highly touted, pitifully voguish "American Beauty" (opening Sept. 17), the man is apt to have weird hang-ups and disquieting obsessions, such as wanting to make love to a comely friend of his high-school daughter.
Spacey has clusters of devoted fans. But he's not the object of sexual fantasy that Matt, Brad and Leo are in one age bracket and Newman, Redford and Connery are in another. Spacey embodies fantasists, not fantasies. A Spacey character lives up or plays down to a particular idea of himself, and when he charms other people, it's because he reflects their heightened visions of themselves. In Spacey's first co-starring role -- the homicidal scam artist in the ludicrous sex thriller "Consenting Adults" (1992) -- he spent half the movie persuading Kevin Kline that Kline was bold and swinging enough to swap wives with Spacey. Kline's character didn't realize that Spacey was seducing him (and conning him) as much as Spacey's voluptuous spouse was. But who could blame the sucker?
Spacey is the movie star as shape-changer (even if it means getting into shape, as it does in "American Beauty"): You can't tell what form he'll take from scene to scene, much less from movie to movie. Or even where and when he will turn up: He played the serial killer in "Seven" sans credit and didn't appear until the third act.
Spacey specializes in men who size up all the possibilities around them -- and inside them, too. "I doubt you've ever drawn a stupid breath," the police captain tells Spacey's spiffy detective in "L.A. Confidential." In the climactic scene of "The Usual Suspects," a Customs agent informs Spacey's palsied hood that a mate has exploited Spacey because he's "stupid" -- a howling irony, because he is anything but. ("As the character changed and developed," screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie said, "and Kevin Spacey came in and began to give him life, he became smarter.") Spacey's cunning, talkative guys typically know when to shut up. In "Looking for Richard," Al Pacino's cheerful documentary about interpreting Shakespeare's "Richard III," Spacey bides his time until the moment arrives for his Buckingham to take center stage. Then, with a comparison of Buckingham to Ollie North, he unleashes an analysis that leads Pacino to exclaim, "You are a very smart man."
It makes sense that Spacey has become a Web darling with multitudinous fan sites. His quicksilver changeability and control mirror the speed and flexibility of computer-age sensibilities. And so far, Spacey's brains haven't been a Hollywood burden. He's developed flabbergasting range, creating monsters that make you cry and heroes who make you cringe. He's transformed sheer avidity into a turn-on. He's also (as in "Seven") conjured turn-offs so massive they leave you queasy for days.
