In a town that has acting talent of every size and shape on tap, a director deliberately chooses a short, fair-skinned man from New Jersey to play a tall, dark Southerner. Unusual? Suspect? No, just testament to Kevin Spacey's talent, says Jeff Hayward.

The reason Kevin Spacey isn't a major celebrity is because this acclaimed character actor genuinely likes it that way. He's quite happy to be considered an actor rather than a movie star. For a start, Kevin doesn't really fit the Hollywood profile of a movie star. He hasn't tampered with his receding hairline. He has fairly nondescript features which would be a stretch to consider anything more than pleasant looking. And he is not one for showing up at celebrity-laced nightspots or "in" parties with a young starlet hanging off his arm. This 39-year-old says he wants the world to see him for his film roles and his stage work, not for what's going on his personal life. "My private life is a line I never felt comfortable crossing," he maintains. "I don't fault people for having an interest in my personal life, nor do I try and stop that interest; I just don't participate in it."

So what we are left with are some of American cinema's most eye-catching performances with which to get a clue who Kevin Spacey really is. He's best known for his Oscar-winning performance as a wily master criminal in in 1995's The Usual Suspects (Best Supporting Actor). He also played a wonderfully depraved serial killer in Se7en and a morally complex cop in the recent film noir hit L.A. Confidential. A string of smaller supporting roles have assisted his slow climb to recognition, including parts in Heartburn (1986), Henry & June (1990), Glengarry Glenn Ross (1992), Consenting Adults (1992) and Outbreak (1995).

In 1997, Kevin made his debut as a film director with the small budget drama Albino Alligator, which starred Faye Dunaway and Matt Dillon. L.A. Confidential has proved another timely boost to his career and could be in line for Oscars. While his follow-up starring role in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil hasn't attracted the same level of critical acclaim on its release in America, this still a very interesting choice of role.
Clint Eastwood has adapted Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil from John Berendt's true account of murder and decadence in the moody city of Savannah, Georgia. Kevin plays discreet Southern homosexual antiques dealer, who is charged with murdering his male lover. "The film is really about our need for tolerance," explains Kevin. "As a matter of fact, it's what Clint is all about in all he does."

The core of the story is the unresolved murder mystery. Jim Williams was unsuccessfully brought to trial no less than four times over the killing of his much younger lover, who he claims he shot to death in self-defence. He was finally acquitted in May, 1989, and died of heart failure a few months later. Williams was a charming and intelligent man who rose from humble beginnings to the height of Savannah society, keeping his homosexual activities well hidden. His notorious annual party became one of the social events of the city. The truth was that few people really knew Williams, according to Kevin, who claims: "He was like a black limousine, you can look out but you can't look into him." By all accounts, he was a character who liked to foster an air of mystery and went to a lot of trouble to cultivate a charismatic image.

The central location for the film is a beautifully restored 19th-century Italianate mansion in downtown Savannah that was Williams' home. Kevin says he loved filming on location in the historic city because much of it is unchanged from its Confederate heyday of last century. "The rest of the cities in this country tend to be homogenised but not Savannah. If you took away the cars and replaced them with horses and buggies it would exactly be the same city it was before."

There was early pressure on Clint Eastwood as director to cast a real Southener like Tommy Lee Jones in the role of Jim Williams. Clint held out for Kevin, who is fairer and smaller than the real Jim Williams and hails from New Jersey. Dark contact lences, a clipped moustache and a careful study of Williams' distinctive Southern mannerisms and speech revived this loquacious and bourbon-smooth dandy of a character. Williams' surviving sister admits that she was impressed by how closely Kevin captured the character of her late brother.
That's what Kevin says he loves so much about his chosen career - being able to lose himself in another character and use that as a vehicle to explore the ways we treat each other. "Whether the character I'm doing does good or bad things doesn't interest me. It's whether there are ambiguities to play with that I find really interesting. I'm always looking for the best to tell a story and the least intrusive. Often in the end it boils down to what kind of choices they're making and being faced with."

Kevin grew up in Southern California, the youngest of three children. His mother was a secretary and his father a technical writer. He was sent to military school early (after burning up his sister's trrehouse)but didn't last long there. He says he caught the acting bug as a teenager attending high school drama classes. In 1981, he was admitted to the celebrated Juilliard School of Drama in New York, where he studied alongside with Val Kilmer. Kevin made his stage debut in a Central Park production of Henry IV Part 1. HIs big break came on Broadway five years later, opposite Jack Lemmon in Long Day's Journey Into Night and he has worked steadily in the theater since his film debut in Heartburn. He recently returned to the New York stage as actor and producer of National Anthems. After filming the drama The Negotiator with Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin plans to do a London stage season of The Iceman Cometh.

Kevin's "sudden" success is certainly not a case of a hot new name coming out of nowhere. It's just the icing on the cake, he says. Of his recent success of playing morally ambigous characters, he says, "Some of these films explored ceratin areas of how we treat each other that I find horrific and that's why I wanted to do them."
He rejects any notion that these roles are attractive because they mirror his own behaviour. "I really don't think that's the way people see me," he says. "What people don't quite understand is that I was working as an actor for over 15 years before these big films started happening to me. I was always making my living as an actor, not waiting on tables.
"Maybe when I was in my early twenties in New York and I wasn't getting any work or doing theatre in New Jersey and going out of my mind - those were the times I was thinking I was going to be defeated. But the truth is, since about 1986 I haven't stopped working as an actor."

In person, Kevin is a naturally unassuming man, a blend of logical intellect and artist's savvy. He doesn't push himself into the spotlight to attract attention. You could imagine Kevin Spacey as a tradesman or saleman. He pays credit to his mother Kathleen for success as an actor. She was the one who encouraged him and he paid tribute to her in front of millions of viewers when he received his Oscar for The Usual Suspects.
"She used to leave work early, come and pick me up at school and drive me to acting class. Then she'd pick me up and take me to a dance class or or piano lesson or whatever it was I'd got myself involved in," he recalls. And she is still one of the people he seeks advice from. "I bounce ideas off her. She's always been a person of enormous integrity and I think she has a lot to do with me becoming the person I am."