Inside the Actors Studio
Guests 
Kevin Spacey
Season 6, Episode 607
Original Airdate: March 5, 2000
Kevin Spacey Fowler was born in New Jersey on 26 July, 1959, but grew up mostly in Southern California.
He graduated from Chatsworth High School where classmates included Mare Winningham and Val Kilmer. After playing Captain von Trapp to Winningham's Maria in a school production of The Sound of Music, Spacey followed Kilmer to New York's Juilliard School. He dropped out before getting a degree to work in the New York Shakespeare Festival.
His significant stage roles included Ibsen's Ghosts, Long Day's Journey Into Night with Jack Lemmon, and his Tony-winning role in Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers. Most recently he appeared in The Iceman Cometh in London and New York. Mike Nichols chose Kevin Spacey to replace Harvey Keitel in David Rabe's Hurlyburly on Broadway, which helped jump start his career. After Hurlyburly, Nichols put Spacey into his first small film roles in the movies Heartburn (1986) and Working Girl (1988).
Spacey had a role alongside Jack Lemmon in Dad (1989) but was more memorable as the crafty office manager in the testosterone-laden Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) with a cast that included Lemmon, Al Pacino, Ed Harris and Alec Baldwin. He also appeared in The Ref (1994), Outbreak (1995) and as the chilling serial killer in Seven (1995).
1995 was a very busy year for Spacey, as he not only starred in, but co-produced Swimming With Sharks and won his first Academy Award for his performance as Verbal Kint in the sleeper hit The Usual Suspects. Now on the Hollywood A-list, Spacey took time to make his directorial debut with Albino Alligator (1996).
He has since been busy appearing in Al Pacino's Looking For Richard (1996), L.A. Confidential (1997), Clint Eastwood's Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil (1998), The Negotiator (1998) and voicing an evil grasshopper in the animated film A Bug's Life (1998). 1999 saw Spacey take on The Big Kahuna, and his Oscar-winning role as Lester Burnham in American Beauty (1999). Films since have included Pay It Forward (2000), K-Pax (2001) and the upcoming The Shipping News (2001).
