Kevin Spacey

• 1. Introduction

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  Late in the 1995 thriller Se7en, Kevin Spacey walks into the story as the serial killer John Doe, and most of the audience had no idea he was coming. His name was missing from the opening credits. It was missing from the film's advertisements too. That kind of entrance suited an actor who had spent years turning small, sharp parts into the ones people remembered.

  This documentary follows Kevin Spacey, an American actor whose work ran across theatre, film, television, music and even a London playhouse he ran for more than a decade. What shaped him? Why did a theatre in London matter to him as much as Hollywood did? And what became of a career built on charm, menace and intelligence when its fortunes turned?

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• 2. Early Years

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  Kevin Spacey Fowler was born on the 26th of July 1959 in South Orange, New Jersey. His mother, Kathleen Ann, born Knutson, worked as a secretary. His father, Thomas Geoffrey Fowler, was a technical writer and data consultant. The family relocated to Southern California when he was four years old. He has a sister and an older brother, Randy Fowler, from whom he is estranged.

  Randy Fowler has described their father as a racist "Nazi supporter" who was sexually and physically abusive. He said Kevin shut down emotionally and became "very sly and smart" to avoid beatings. Spacey first addressed the matter in October 2022. He called his father "a white supremacist and a neo-Nazi" and said the man would call him "an F-word that is very derogatory to the gay community". As a result, Spacey said, he became extremely private and did not come out as gay earlier in his life. He had previously described his father as "a very normal, middle-class man".

  His schooling moved through several campuses. He attended Northridge Military Academy, then Canoga Park High School for the 10th and 11th grades. He graduated as co-valedictorian, alongside Mare Winningham, from Chatsworth High School in Chatsworth, Los Angeles, in the class of 1977. In the school's senior production of The Sound of Music he played Captain Georg von Trapp, with Winningham as Maria von Trapp. Around this time he began using his middle name, Spacey, which was his paternal grandmother's maiden name.

  For several years he tried to make it as a comedian. Then he enrolled at the Juilliard School in New York City as a member of Group 12. He studied drama with the teacher Marian Seldes between 1979 and 1981, though he did not graduate. During those years he performed comedy in bowling alley talent contests.

  His father doubted that he could build a career as an actor. The man did not change his mind until his son became well known.

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• 3. Life on Stage

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  A spear carrier in a New York Shakespeare Festival performance of Henry VI, Part 1 in 1981 was the first professional stage role Kevin Spacey held. The following year he made his first Broadway appearance as Oswald in Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts, starring Liv Ullmann and directed by John Neville. That production opened at the Eisenhower Theater in Washington's Kennedy Center. He then played Philinte in Molière's The Misanthrope. In 1984 he joined David Rabe's Hurlyburly, rotating through each of the male parts. He would later play Mickey in the film version. Next came Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, alongside David Strathairn and Colleen Dewhurst. In 1986 he even appeared in Sleuth at a New Jersey dinner theatre.

  Jonathan Miller's lauded 1986 production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night changed his standing. Spacey played Jamie, the eldest Tyrone son, opposite Jack Lemmon, Peter Gallagher and Bethel Leslie. Lemmon became his mentor. In 1999, Lemmon and Spacey's high school drama teacher were both invited to watch him receive his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

  Neil Simon's Broadway hit Lost in Yonkers brought Spacey a Tony Award in 1991 for his portrayal of Uncle Louie. In 1999 he won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for a revival of The Iceman Cometh. That same production earned him his second Tony Award nomination.

  In February 2003, Spacey announced that he would become artistic director of the Old Vic, one of London's oldest theatres. At the press conference, with Judi Dench and Elton John beside him, he promised to appear on stage and to bring in big-name talent. He undertook to stay in the post for a full ten years. The Old Vic Theatre Company staged shows for eight months of each year.

  His first season began in September 2004 with the British premiere of Cloaca by Maria Goos, which Spacey directed. It opened to mixed reviews. In 2005 he made his UK Shakespearean debut in the title role of Richard II, directed by Trevor Nunn, to good notices.

  By mid-2006 Spacey said he was "trying to do things now that are much bigger and outside myself". He performed in National Anthems by Dennis McIntyre and in The Philadelphia Story by Philip Barry, playing C.K. Dexter Haven, the Cary Grant role in the film version. Critics applauded him for taking on the running of a theatre. They also noted that his skills and judgment as a producer and manager had yet to develop.

  Arthur Miller's Resurrection Blues, directed by Robert Altman, became the major setback of the 2006 season. The cast was all-star, with Matthew Modine and Neve Campbell among them. After a fraught rehearsal period the play opened to a critical panning and closed after only a few weeks. Later that year Spacey starred in Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten, with Colm Meaney and Eve Best. It drew excellent reviews for Spacey and Best, and it transferred to Broadway in 2007. In the spring of the 2007-08 season, Jeff Goldblum and Laura Michelle Kelly joined him in David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow.

  In 2009 Spacey directed the premiere of Joe Sutton's Complicit, with Richard Dreyfuss, David Suchet and Elizabeth McGovern. Later that year Trevor Nunn directed him in a revival of Inherit the Wind. Spacey played the defense lawyer Henry Drummond, a role Spencer Tracy made famous in the 1960 film. Sam Mendes then directed him as Richard III, a show that began in June 2011 and toured worldwide before ending in New York in early 2012. In March 2014 came the announcement of a one-man play at the Old Vic, Darrow, to celebrate his ten years as artistic director. He played Clarence Darrow.

  He led the theatre from 2004 to 2015, and the Society of London Theatre gave him its Special Award for the work. In 2017 he hosted the 71st Tony Awards.

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• 4. Villains and Oscars

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  Heartburn, Mike Nichols's 1986 comedy-drama starring Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson, gave Spacey his first film appearance. He played a subway thief in a small role. In 1988 he appeared briefly in another Nichols film, Working Girl, as the businessman Bob Speck.

  Television came with a Kennedy-esque American senator in the second-season premiere of Crime Story in 1987. That year he also played Detective Sergeant Cole in the episode "Solo" of The Equalizer. As the manic depressive arms dealer Mel Profitt on Wiseguy in 1988, he earned a fan base. His other early roles included a widowed millionaire on L.A. Law, the miniseries The Murder of Mary Phagan opposite Lemmon, and the 1989 comedy See No Evil, Hear No Evil.

  In the early 1990s he quickly developed a reputation as a character actor. He played the malevolent office manager in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), the ensemble adaptation of a David Mamet play. In 1994 he appeared as the news reporter Harry Kingsley in Iron Will, directed by Charles Haid. He also played half of a bickering Connecticut couple opposite Judy Davis in the Christmas dark comedy The Ref. In 1995 he played a malicious Hollywood studio boss in the satire Swimming with Sharks.

  Verbal Kint, the enigmatic criminal in Bryan Singer's 1995 neo-noir The Usual Suspects, made him prominent. He starred in an ensemble with Gabriel Byrne, Benicio del Toro and Chazz Palminteri. Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote, "Spacey is terrific as the mysterious weak link in the chain of thieves". The role won him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. It also brought Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild nominations. His work in Se7en, The Usual Suspects and Outbreak earned him Best Supporting Actor honors at the 1995 Society of Texas Film Critics Awards.

  In 1996 Spacey played an egomaniacal district attorney in A Time to Kill. In L.A. Confidential (1997), directed by Curtis Hanson, he acted alongside Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce and Kim Basinger. His character, Detective Sergeant Jack Vincennes, was an officer and technical advisor for a fictional TV police drama. Jack Matthews of Newsday wrote, "Best of all are Spacey striking an impossible balance of smarminess and charm". The role earned a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role. The next year he voiced the intimidating grasshopper Hopper in Pixar's A Bug's Life.

  Spacey has long been known for playing villains. In 2013 he remarked, "I think people just like me evil for some reason. They want me to be a son of a bitch." He hosted Saturday Night Live twice. The first time was in 1997, with the musical guest Beck and special guests Michael Palin and John Cleese. The second was in May 2006, with the musical guest Nelly Furtado.

  In Sam Mendes's American Beauty (1999), acting alongside Annette Bening, Spacey played Lester Burnham. Lester is a depressed suburban father and advertising executive who becomes attracted to his teenage daughter's best friend. Roger Ebert called Spacey "an actor who embodies intelligence in his eyes and voice". The performance won him a second Academy Award, plus the BAFTA Award and the Screen Actors Guild Award, and a Golden Globe nomination. In his acceptance speech he dedicated the Oscar to Jack Lemmon, praising him as an influence, mentor and father figure. He said Lemmon's performance in The Apartment "stands as one of the finest we've ever had".

  The new decade brought a scarred grade school teacher in Pay It Forward (2000) and a mental institution patient who may or may not be an alien in K-Pax (2001). In 2006 he played Lex Luthor in Superman Returns, directed by Bryan Singer and starring Brandon Routh. He was due to return for a 2009 sequel, but the series was instead rebooted with Man of Steel in 2013. In 2008 he played a Massachusetts Institute of Technology lecturer in 21, based on Ben Mezrich's best seller Bringing Down the House. That book follows student card-counters who used mathematical probability to beat blackjack. In 2014 he lent a motion-captured performance to the antagonist Jonathan Irons in the video game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.

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• 5. Directing and Producing

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  Trigger Street Productions, founded by Spacey in 1997, was meant to produce and develop entertainment across various media. His directorial debut, Albino Alligator (1996), was a box-office bomb. Critics nonetheless praised his direction.

  Beyond the Sea (2004) was a lifelong dream project. Spacey co-wrote, directed, co-produced and starred in a musical biography of the singer Bobby Darin, covering his career and his relationship with the actress Sandra Dee. Backers in the United States showed little interest, so Spacey went to the United Kingdom and Germany for funding. Almost all of the film was made in Berlin. He sang on the soundtrack himself and appeared in several tribute concerts around its release. Reviews of his singing were mostly positive, and he earned a Golden Globe nomination. Reviewers did debate whether Spacey was too old to portray Darin convincingly, especially in the early years of the singer's life.

  Music ran through his career in other ways. In 1997 he sang "That Old Black Magic" for the Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil soundtrack. On the 2nd of October 2001 he performed "Mind Games" at Radio City Music Hall in New York for Come Together: A Night for John Lennon's Words and Music. His Capitol/EMI album Forever Cool (2007) includes two duets with an earlier recording of Dean Martin, "Ain't That a Kick in the Head" and "King of the Road". In December 2007 he co-hosted the Nobel Peace Prize Concert with Uma Thurman. On the 12th of April 2015 he sang "Bridge over Troubled Water" with Beverley Knight at the 39th Laurence Olivier Awards at the Royal Opera House in London.

  His voice was also a party trick. On Inside the Actors Studio, at host James Lipton's request, he imitated Jack Lemmon, James Stewart, Johnny Carson, Katharine Hepburn, Clint Eastwood, John Gielgud, Marlon Brando, Christopher Walken and Al Pacino. On The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon he admitted that, as a young actor in New York City, he pretended to be Carson's son to get free theatre tickets and to enter Studio 54.

  As a producer, Spacey made the HBO film Bernard and Doris in 2008. It is a semi-fictionalized account of the relationship between the heiress and philanthropist Doris Duke and her self-destructive Irish butler, Bernard Lafferty. Ralph Fiennes and Susan Sarandon starred, and Bob Balaban directed. It premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival to critical acclaim, and Spacey was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie. In 2013 he executive-produced Captain Phillips, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

  In January 2016, Relativity Media, then emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy, acquired Trigger Street Productions. Spacey was to become chairman of Relativity Studios, with Dana Brunetti as president. Spacey called the move "an incredible opportunity to make great entertainment" and "the next evolution in my career". Court paperwork later showed he had opted out of the chairmanship. By the end of 2016 Brunetti had left too. Both remained executive producers on House of Cards and Manifesto.

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• 6. House of Cards

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  Recount, the 2008 HBO film about Florida's vote recount in the 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore, cast Spacey as Ron Klain. Danny Strong wrote it and Jay Roach directed. The cast included Bob Balaban, Laura Dern, John Hurt, Denis Leary and Tom Wilkinson. The film won three Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Television Movie. Spacey was nominated for the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie and for a Golden Globe.

  Early in 2010, Spacey traveled to China to star in Dayyan Eng's black comedy Inseparable. That made him the first Hollywood actor to star in a fully Chinese-funded film. In 2011 he starred in J.C. Chandor's financial thriller Margin Call, with Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quinto, Demi Moore and Stanley Tucci. The story unfolds over 24 hours at a large Wall Street investment bank during the early stages of the 2008 financial crisis. It debuted at the Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim, and Spacey shared the Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award with the cast. That year he also co-starred in the black comedy Horrible Bosses.

  On the 18th of March 2011, Netflix announced that Spacey would play Frank Underwood in House of Cards, adapted from a 1990 BBC political drama of the same name. At the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2013, he was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series. He became the first lead actor nominated for an Emmy from a web television series. For his season 2 performance he won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Television Series Drama at the 72nd Golden Globe Awards. From 2013 to 2017 he also won two consecutive Screen Actors Guild Awards for Best Actor. Both Spacey and the show were nominated for five consecutive Primetime Emmy Awards.

  In Elvis & Nixon (2016) he played President Richard Nixon, opposite Michael Shannon as Elvis Presley. The comedy-drama is based on their December 1970 meeting, where Presley asked Nixon to swear him in as an undercover agent in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Spacey next starred in the comedy Nine Lives, as a man trapped in the body of a cat. It was released on the 5th of August 2016.

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• 7. Honors and Causes

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  Clarence House was the setting on the 16th of June 2016, when then-Prince Charles gave Spacey an honorary knighthood. The honor, Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, came in the 2015 Queen's Birthday Honours for services to theatre, arts education and international culture. Because Spacey is not a citizen of a Commonwealth Realm, the award is honorary, and he is not entitled to the honorific "Sir". In 2010 he had received the lesser rank of honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to drama. He was also a patron of the Shakespeare Schools Festival, which lets school children across the UK perform Shakespeare in professional theatres. He sits on the board of directors of the Motion Picture and Television Fund.

  Spacey is a Democrat and has been described as left-leaning. He worked on Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential campaign. He is a friend of Bill Clinton, whom he met before Clinton's presidency began, and once called Clinton "one of the shining lights" in the political process. He made a cameo in President Clinton: Final Days, a light-hearted satire produced by the Clinton Administration for the 2000 White House Correspondents Dinner.

  HIV and AIDS were a recurring cause. In 2002 Spacey and the actor Chris Tucker accompanied Clinton on a trip through several African countries to promote AIDS awareness. The trip drew renewed attention in 2019, amid the sex trafficking charges against Jeffrey Epstein, whose plane was used. Epstein's pilot Larry Visoski confirmed that Spacey flew on the jet. Spacey also took part in fundraisers, including amfAR Cinema Against AIDS in 2016 and the 25th Annual Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Award Party in 2017.

  In September 2007, Spacey met the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez but never spoke to the press about it. During that trip he visited the Venezuelan film studio Villa del Cine. In March 2011, after Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko's crackdown on the Belarusian democracy movement, he joined Jude Law in a street protest in London. In September 2006 he said he intended to take up British citizenship when offered. Asked about the UK's 2016 European Union membership referendum, he replied, "I am not a British citizen; I am a resident of Great Britain." He added that it would be inappropriate for him, as a guest, to get involved.

  In October 2008, Spacey started the Kevin Spacey Foundation in the UK to encourage youth involvement in the arts. Based in England and Wales, it gave grants to individuals and organizations to help young people study the arts, particularly theatre. The charity shut down in February 2018.

  His later public positions drew attention of their own. In May 2024 he endorsed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., running as an independent, in the 2024 United States presidential election. In December 2024 he visited the Israel-Gaza border and toured areas affected by Hamas' attacks of October 2023. The journalist Douglas Murray accompanied him. Spacey was reportedly visiting the daughter of a friend who is serving in the Israel Defence Forces.

  In July 2025 Spacey called for the release of the Epstein files, saying, "For those of us with nothing to fear, the truth can't come soon enough." When some of the files came out in December 2025, Spacey himself was present in some of the photographs.

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• 8. Privacy and Allegations

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  The Sunday Times Magazine reported in 1999 that Esquire magazine had asserted two years earlier that Spacey must be gay. Spacey told Playboy and other interviewers that he was not gay. He explained to Lesley White of The Sunday Times that he had chosen to participate because "it's a little hard on the people I love". Early in the 1980s, after she graduated from high school, he briefly dated the actress April Winchell. Reports in 1999 suggested he was dating a script supervisor named Dianne Dreyer, possibly since 1992. At the 2000 Academy Awards he brought her along and said in his speech, "Dianne, thank you for teaching me about caring about the right things, and I love you." In 2007 Gotham magazine quoted him saying, "I've never believed in pimping my personal life out for publicity."

  On the 29th of October 2017, the actor Anthony Rapp became the first to accuse Spacey of sexual misconduct. Over the following weeks others came forward, including the actor Roberto Cavazos, the filmmaker Tony Montana, Richard Dreyfuss's son Harry, and at least eight people who worked on House of Cards. In 2017 Spacey came out as gay in a statement denying one allegation. Netflix cut ties with him, shelved his biopic of Gore Vidal, and removed him from the last season of House of Cards. He was fired after the fifth season.

  Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World had cast him in March 2017 as J. Paul Getty. Spacey shot the role in ten days over the summer. On the 8th of November 2017, it was announced that all of his footage would be cut and replaced in reshoots by Christopher Plummer. TriStar Pictures finished the new version in time for a release on the 25th of December. Billionaire Boys Club, completed in late 2016, had a limited release on the 17th of August 2018. Its distributor, Vertical Entertainment, said, "We don't condone sexual harassment on any level and we fully support victims of it." Spacey kept a lower profile, and his career stalled.

  During 2018 and 2019 he faced multiple criminal investigations. In each case he was either not charged or the charges were dropped, for reasons such as death, refusal to testify and statute of limitations. Spacey has denied the accusations. He was found not liable in a 2022 civil lawsuit filed by Rapp in New York. In a separate case in London, a jury acquitted him of sexual assault charges in 2023. By 2024 he owed considerable legal expenses, and his house in Baltimore, Maryland was undergoing foreclosure and sale at auction.

  In May 2021, Spacey was cast as a police detective in The Man Who Drew God, directed by and starring Franco Nero. The film reunited him with Faye Dunaway and concerns a blind artist wrongly accused of sexually abusing a child. In August 2021 he was reportedly filming Peter Five Eight in California, playing a "charismatic" serial killer. On the 3rd of November 2022, Variety reported that he was set to speak at the National Museum of Cinema and receive a lifetime achievement award on the 16th of January 2023. On the 28th of November 2022 he was cast in the British indie thriller Control, and its director, Gene Fallaize, dismissed concerns about working with him. Also in 2022 he was cast as the Croatian leader Franjo Tuđman in Once Upon a Time in Croatia, directed by Jakov Sedlar.

  In 2024, Sharon Stone, Liam Neeson, F. Murray Abraham, Stephen Fry, Paul Schrader and Trevor Nunn publicly supported his attempts to return to acting. Peter Five Eight, released that year, marked his return to a major role. He also starred in The Contract, an Italian production, with Eric Roberts. In November 2025 he performed a cabaret show, Songs & Stories, at the Parklane Resort in Limassol, Cyprus. He told The Daily Telegraph that he was "living in hotels" and performing where he could find work because of his financial situation after his legal battles. In December 2025 he starred in Minimarket, an Italian comedy television series on RaiPlay.

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