Kevin Spacey Photo Gallery
From US Magazine, April, 1996:
By Joe Rhodes
Photo by Andrew Southam
Kevin Spacey models his new Carsonwear.
Kevin Spacey has always played creepy guys - everything from drug dealers to televangelists - really well. And this year he hit the creepy-guy mother lode, turning in a trio of damaged-in-his-soul performances that have made him the hottest character actor in Hollywood. Most of the accolades, including Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations, have come for his deceptively low-key portrayal of crippled con man Roger "Verbal" Kint in The Usual Suspects. Combine that with his renderings of a demented studio executive in Swimming with Sharks and the chillingly passive serial killer in Seven, and you can understand why every psycho-killer part in town is tossed his way. But the 36-year-old Spacey, who won a 1991 Tony Award for his decidedly noncreepy Broadway performance in Lost in Yonkers, is turning all of them down, hoping he'll get the chance to play something other than nasties for a while. His next big-screen appearance will be as a slick Mississippi district attorney (OK, a sort of bad guy) in John Grisham's A Time to Kill. And he has just finished filming his directorial debut, Albino Alligator, starring Matt Dillon and Faye Dunaway. Pleased as he is by all the attention suddenly coming his way, Spacey says he's trying not to get too caught up in all the four-star reviews and awards-ceremony invitations.
"I don't believe in basking. Tennessee Williams wrote a great essay called 'The Catastrophe of Success,' about what happens when you wallow around a kidney-shaped swimming pool collecting residual checks when you should be doing meaningful work. Not only is it dangerous for your talent, but it's dangerous for you as a person."
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Author: Jennie Bolton
Last Updated: 12/29/96