With roles last year in Outbreak, Seven and The Usual Suspects, for which he was nominated for an Oscar, he’s no longer just a face in the crowd.

In Swimming With Sharks, you play an entertainment exec who is compietely abusive to his assistant, who later exacts his revenge. How did Hollywood suits react? Did they see themselves?
People absolutely saw themselves, and it didn’t end in this town. I took the film to Washington DC and did a screening for the White House staff and Congressional aides. The same kind of climbing the corporate ladder, people whose sincerity is dripping from their fangs, that happens in every business. We did a couple of "assistants only" screenings and we raffled off an assistant for a day: me.

Who won you?
This wonderful girl named Nicole at the Agency for the Performing Arts. It brought me right back to when I used to be an assistant for producer Joe Papp in New York. I xeroxed and filed and answered phones. Quite frankly, the place has gone down hill since I left. I make a fine cup of coffee.

lt must be very satisfying to lend your talents to small projeets with young directors, like Swimming With Sharks and The Usual Suspects, and have the films find an audience.
lt's really encouraging because it says that audiences are looking for films that allow them to get lost and confuse the shit out of them. The experience [director] Bryan Singer and I had making The Usual Suspects was talking about how we could do things that would he really fun when you watch the movie a second time.

Could you make sense of the script when you first read it?
Yeah. When Bryan and [screenwriter] Chris [McQuarrie] presented the script to me they didn't tell me what role to read, full well knowing that they wanted me to play Verbal.

Why didn’t they tell you?
Because they know that's my philosophy about reading scripts. That way, if I like a story, I'm responding to it out of innocence, not, "Oh, this is a good part." I try to, rather than be seduced by money, choose stories that don't just ask me to do what I've done before. lt's so easy to do that. I think it's the destiny of all artists that people say, "I prefer their early stuff."

I had no idea you were in Seven until you showed up on the screen.
That's exactly what I wanted. The studio wanted me to take star billing and it was a big fight not to. I said, "It makes no sense. If people see my name at the beginning and I don't show up for the first 25 minutes, they're going to figure out who I'm playing."

What convinced them to give you the part in the first place?
I actually didn't get the role at first. They were going with another actor and it didn't work out, and I got a phone call on a Friday night saying, "Can you start shooting on Tuesday?"

You've just directed your first feature, Albino Alligator. What’s it about?
lt's about these three bumbling burglars played by Matt Dillon, Gary Sinise and William Fichtner, who are attempting to execute the perfect robbery, which goes ridiculously, stupidly wrong. It's a kind of Dog Day Afternoon scenario. I'm not in the movie. I did all my acting convincing everybody else to be in it.

I talked to an actor recently who just directed a short, and all the tantrums he threw as an actor came back to haunt him when he blocked the first scene and his actor went, "No man, my character would never do that."
I had the advantage that five of my actors were hostages, so if they felt like moving, they couldn't. "I know you feel like going over there, but you have a gun on you so you can't.

Why do people always seem to get tied up in your movies?
I'd like to think it's just a happy circumstance. I don't think producers are going, "Somebody's tied to a chair. Send it to Spacey."

What have you done lately?
I played an attorney in A Time To Kill, with Sandra Bullock. We had a great time in Mississippi. I was her husband wherever she went because she's so identifiable now. We went dancing and everyone would sort of gravitate toward her and she'd say, "No, I can't dance with you. My husband will get upset." Then they'd look at me and she'd go, "Did you see Seven? Don't fuck with him."

What's the worst audition you’ve ever had?
It was for Dustin Hoffman and Arthur Miller for Death Of A Salesman. I was so bad, Dustin walked out. He couldn't stand it.

You should have tied him to a chair.
I hadn't gotten to that point in my life yet.

Have you ever heen to a psychic?
Once, when I was 17. She said, "You will travel to an island, you will be surrounded by music, and then you will leave the music and start your life." I thought, OK, take another Quaalude. It was only interesting years later when someone said, "Wait, that shit's happened to you. " A year-and-a-half after I met the psychic, I travelled to the island of Manhattan, went to Juilliard, where the drama department is literally surrounded by the Juilliard School of Music, stayed two years and then left and started my life.

Who woke you up to tell you that you’d been nominated for an Oscar?
I was up. I watched it. There was no way not to watch it; the phone started ringing even before the nominations were announced. I was never sorrier that my last name started with an "S", because they do it alphabetically. Then I spent the rest of the day in budget battles for my movie.

Have the tabloids dug up any dirt on you since your Oscar nomination?
The LA Daily News did a story on the fact that Mare Winningham and I, who both got our first nominations this year, went to high school together and played the Captain and Maria in our class play, The Sound of Music.

Are all the big designers dying to dress you on Oscar night?
They are generous enough to do sketches of custom ideas and I’ll pick what I think I hopefully look the best in. One of the designers sent a drawing of me in a tuxedo with Verbal's haircut.

Who are you taking?
My mother. She’s going to wear whatever Emma Thompson doesn’t wear.