Spacey comes across as the real McCoy, perhaps because his appeal is not based on physical baggage so much as a certain casual intensity of spirit. Kevin Spacey is lounging at the coffee table leafing through a film magazine Most stars appear diminished off-screen. In 1996 a Vanity Fair article (headlined “Kevin Spacey has a secret”) all but stated that the actor was gay. Observers began to feel that Spacey’s silence was conspiring against him. The blank page of his private life had become the site for so much scribbled gossip and innuendo.The London hotel suite is light and airy. Ever since he broke big, Spacey’s lack of a wife (or indeed any known girlfriends to speak of) has left him open to speculation about his sexuality. Entertainment Weekly rated him the world’s greatest performer (alongside his co-star in The Negotiator, Samuel L Jackson).
Last October saw him honoured with a star on the Hollywood walk of fame – a shockingly early achievement for an actor just past his 40th birthday.The trouble is that Spacey’s runaway fame has been paralleled by an increasing focus on the off-screen reality, the man behind the masks. His double-talking tour de force in The Usual Suspects won him a Best Actor Oscar. He loomed up – late and audaciously uncredited – as the psycho-killer in Seven; dropped dead with a startling abruptness in LA Confidential. Professionally, the man is one of the most visible performers in the business Personally, he’s a figure in shadow. “Nobody knows who I am and that’s the way I want it to stay,” Spacey told an interviewer way back in 1991.
“Success is like death.” It is, he says, a philosophy he’s stuck to ever since.But in the meantime, success found Spacey. “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled,” he says, “was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
Swap the word Devil for actor and you’re part way towards catching the enigma that is Kevin Spacey. Kint is puzzling over the identity of a mysterious, all-powerful crime boss who goes by the name of Keyser Soze The cops reckon that Soze’s a myth, an empty construct Kint isn’t so sure. “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled,” he says, “was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
Nestled at the heart of that expert, hall-of-mirrors thriller The Usual Suspects sits a line etched in movie folklore. The line is spoken by the actor Kevin Spacey in the guise of a low-level criminal called Verbal Kint. Kint is puzzling over the identity of a mysterious, all-powerful crime boss who goes by the name of Keyser Soze The cops reckon that Soze’s a myth, an empty construct Kint isn’t so sure.
The working-class world is not seen often enough because all TV drama is supposed to be aspirational these days.” ’Clocking Off’ is on BBC1 at 9pm on Sunday. Nestled at the heart of that expert, hall-of-mirrors thriller The Usual Suspects sits a line etched in movie folklore. The line is spoken by the actor Kevin Spacey in the guise of a low-level criminal called Verbal Kint. It shows a world we rarely see on TV – with none of that ‘Northern clogs’ bollocks you get with some writers, who shall remain nameless .. and clueless.
