The life and times of Kevin Spacey

By Ty Burr, Globe Staff, 2/16/2003

''Someone asked me the other day, `Why do you always play flawed characters?''' Kevin Spacey's eyes widen in gentle amazement at the question's  naivete. ''All human beings are flawed. When do you not play a flawed  character?'' It's the middle of January, and Spacey is in a conference room in the Ritz-Carlton Boston Common, yet so poised and engaging and unflawed is he that you feel like you're sharing a table at a chic LA boite like the Ivy on a sunny afternoon.

The actor's latest character, by contrast, looks to be his most damaged yet. In ''The Life of David Gale,'' Spacey plays the title role, a Texas professor of  philosophy who is at best an alcoholic adulterer, at worst a brutal murderer. Gale is also a noted anti-death-penalty activist who is due to be executed by lethal injection in four days. As an investigative TV reporter (played by Kate  Winslet) takes down his story and becomes convinced of his innocence, the film's driving question splits into two: Who actually killed Gale's friend and fellow activist (Laura Linney), and who is David Gale: a not-so-nice guy, or a really not-so-nice guy?

It's a tribute to Charles Randolph's extra-tricky screenplay that you won't  see the final twist of ''Gale'' coming, just as it's typical of both star Spacey  and director Alan Parker (''Mississippi Burning'') that that twist stands to infuriate as many people as it amazes. Suffice to say that this is not your average politically correct Hollywood issue flick.

''That's why I wanted to make the movie with Alan Parker,'' Spacey says. ''He  completely humanizes what would otherwise be a sort of  limited, speechifying, banner-in-your-face argument. He actually makes an audience consider why these characters would make these particular choices.'' One other thing, admits the actor with the ghost of a smile: ''I  thought it would shake people up.''

And why not? Spacey is clearly finding the mantle of Major Movie Star to be  an itchy fit. Since his remarkable late-1990s trifecta put him inside  Hollywood's magic circle - he won a best supporting actor Oscar for ''The Usual Suspects'' (1996), made an acclaimed appearance in ''LA Confidential'' (1997),  and capped his run with a best actor statue for ''American Beauty'' (1999) - this tart, smart actor has seemed slightly at a loss.

Subsequent films such as ''Pay It Forward,'' ''The Shipping News,'' and  ''K-PAX'' have been received poorly by critics and audiences. He has battled gossipy, who's-he-sleeping-with innuendos more publicly than most stars dare.  And his true creative focus seems to be going more toward off-screen activities  these days.

Spacey's Trigger Street Productions, for instance, is an online peer-review  community (you'll find it at www.triggerstreet.com) for new screenwriters and  filmmakers that, to date, has 70,000 registered members who have uploaded 16,000  scripts and more than 1,000 short films. As part of his dedication to young  American filmmakers, Spacey produced and appears in first-time writer-director Matthew Ryan Hoge's ''The United States of Leland.''

Then there's theater. Spacey's 1998-99 tour as Hickey in Eugene O'Neill's  ''The Iceman Cometh'' is already modern stage legend. But Spacey, a New York  Theater brat whose first professional job was as an extra in one of Joe Papp's  Shakespeare in the Park productions, wants more. ''I think that the next 10 years of my life are going to be much more heavily involved with theater,'' he  says. ''Theater was never a steppingstone to film for me.''

He says this with a certain coyness, as though he's hiding something, and, in  fact, three weeks after this interview, Spacey announces that he is moving to  London to effectively take creative control of the 180-year-old Old Vic theater, where he will be the director of a new company, with plans to direct and act in  individual productions. The company is set to launch in the fall of 2004.

Right now, however, he's about the business of promoting a new movie, and as articulate, forthcoming, and funny as the star is, it's a tricky deal. ''The Life of David Gale'' is not an easy sell, and, at this point in his movie  career, neither, perhaps, is Kevin Spacey.

This, he claims, is why he argued with Universal to move the film out of the end-of-the-year Oscar-eligibility spotlight and into the backwaters of a January release. ''After a thing like ‘American Beauty' happens,'' he says, ''there is the reality that everything you do after that for a while is going to disappoint just a little bit. Which is perfectly reasonable. But it's even more difficult  for a film to find an audience and a real clean reaction if you put it in the dog-and-pony show of the Oscars.''

This is advice he wishes other executives had heeded. Take ''The Shipping  News,'' the adaptation of the E. Annie Proulx bestseller that was released into  the teeth of the 2001 Oscar season. ''I loved that story,'' Spacey says. ''It  was critically attacked, but I think that had less to do with the movie and more to do with the backlash against Miramax. I begged them not to release the  movie when they did.''

Other recent films faced different problems. ''Pay It Forward” I thought was a wonderful idea,'' he says of the much-maligned film in which Haley Joel Osment becomes a schoolyard martyr for selflessness, ''but unfortunately the idea was overtaken by sentimentality, and therefore the sincerity of it was in question. It was just a disappointment. But I still think the idea is great.'' Similarly, ''K-PAX,'' about an asylum inmate who may be mad or may be an alien, ''was a remarkable view of how we view the mentally ill, and I always wanted to work with Jeff [Bridges]; it was great having a two-hander with him.''

Spacey shrugs. ''As I say, the reaction to films post-`American Beauty' will always be just a little bit ... eh. But that's OK, that's part of it, and  then the next thing will come along.''

The next thing - the thing that the reporter doesn't yet know about - is the Old Vic, and it hangs abstractly over the conversation. But there's also a weariness in Spacey's eyes that testifies to a little too much time spent in the  Hollywood trenches. ''You have to ask yourself, OK, what am I going to do now?'' he says of life after Oscar. ''If you start working too much in film, you do too many movies you shouldn't do. I don't want to fall into that particular  trap.''

Does he mean that retroactively? Spacey is far too diplomatic to bite the  hands that have fed him so well. The man just wants a challenge. ''I don't perceive it as walking away from something,'' he insists, ''but I want my life  to shift. I just feel like there aren't that many great movies.'' Or enough  flawed people to play in them.

Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.