#432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life
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The following is a conversation with Kevin spacey, a two time Oscar, a winning actor who has started in seven, the usual suspects, american beauty and house of cards. He is one of the greatest actors ever, creating haunting performances of characters who, often nobody, the dark side of human nature.

Seven years ago, he was cut from house of cards and cancelled by holly's in the world when Anthony rap made an allegation that kind of spaces sexually abused them in one thousand nine hundred and eighty six, anthy rap then filed a civil lawsuit seeking forty million dollars in this trial, and all civilian criminal trials have followed. Kevin was acquitted. He has never been found guilty nor libel in the court of law.

In this conversation, Kevin makes clear what he did and what he didn't do. I also encourage you to listen to Kevin's dan wooton and elson pearson interviews for additional details and responses to the allegations. As an aside, let me say that one of the principles I Operate under for this podcast and in life is that I will talk with everyone with empathy.

I would backbone for each guests. I hope to explore their life's work, live story and what and how they think, and do so honestly and fully. The good, the bad and the ugly, the brilliance and the flaws.

I want to White washed their sins, but I won't reduce them to a worst possible character ture of their sins either. The latter is what the massive I of internet mobs too often does, often rushing to a final judgment before the facts. I will try to do Better than that to respect due process in service of the truth.

And I hope to have the courage to always think independently and to speak honestly from the heart, even when the eyes, the outrage mob are on me again. My goal will understand human beings at their best and at their worst. And the hope is, such understanding leads to more compassion and wisdom in the world. I will make mistakes, and when I do, I will work hard to improve.

I love you all.

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I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This episode is brought you by expressive pm, I used IT to protect my privacy on internet. I used them for many, many years. There's somebody be said for loyalty even with software. Now part of that, of course, I say tongue in cheek because I don't have loyalty to software, but I do have an appreciation of really great design software.

And as a kind of loyalty that builds up, I think people that use apple products have that when you have felt the love that was designed into the products, like a lot of apple products have, the early iphone, all iphone really. But we see job was in in the company that really was an obsessive integration of beauty into every aspect of the product. I mean, some the most beautiful products have a designed were designed by both.

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I walk along side with good expressive pant accounts. I like spot for an extra three months free. This episode is brought to buy asleep and part for ultra. I had a weird experience last night. We're in my dream.

I dreamed of sleep of the bed going up and down the the part for ultra, where you can control the position in the bed and going up and down. So it's kind of surreal to be on the asia bed dreaming about the asia bed. It's very matter.

It's interesting for me to think about the landscape of dreams the people are expLoring every night. You talking about eight billion people on earth. All of them sleep every night. They are expLoring the magical land. I just would love to see all the different words are being explored.

The darkness in the light from the Younger shadow emerges, and would get to play with IT like a puzzle, try to figure IT out like a puzzle in narrative form, as we humans do, as the cool world would lovely be able to visualize IT in general, this whole collective intelligence of the human species is a interesting organism in itself. I would love to visualize that the power of the collective mind anyway, got A C outside legs and use code legs to get three hundred fifty bucks off the pod for altra. This episode is also brought you by a Better help.

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More recently, I realized that my time with a single fraud and call Young, we spent probably more than twenty years ago, I walked the longside them in trying to understand the history of psychoanalysis and the history of expLoring the human mind. That's what I want you to be A C. S.

I wanted through that lens, through that approach, understanding human mind. In some sense, of course, the reason I love doing this podcast is I get to do may be in spirit. The kind of thing the psychology is try to do is to delve into the depth of the human mind shining late onto the union shadow.

Anyway, I bring all that up because I think I need to go back to that work for the philosophy, the wisdom, not the technical details, just the wisdom. But there's power in therapy. And if you want to check IT out, easy, discrete, affordable, available everywhere, check out Better, hope that come sashes and save any first month.

That's Better help with the calm lash legs. This episode rought you by sharpie Y, A platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere with a good, great looking online store. I have a store at last three in the account, large store.

I don't know what they do, that door that a few shirts on there may be a lot more shirts. I just always liked wearing shirts of a people of bans, of movies, of a books that I like, its celebration of the stuff I love. And it's a chance to connect with other human beings over the things I love.

If they know the thing, I get to talk to them and share in their love of the thing. If they don't know about the thing, then I get to a talk about the thing I love and share in that way. It's kind of cool that those are two of the most of connection.

So one is you explaining a thing that another person doesn't know about. And in that explanation, the teacher students are dynamic. You get to celebrate thing.

And then when you're both fans, you get to both celebrate both a teaching student anyway, if you want to sell shirts to sell whatever you want, use, shop fine, sign up for a one dollar promote trial period to shop fy that council legs, all lower case, got to sharp fy that come last legs to take your business to the next level today. This, that is also about you by ag one and all in one daily drink to support Better health and peak performance. I often drink IT twice a day, make the drink, put the fridge, sometimes put in the freezer.

And like thirty years later, is got that beautifully chill consistency, almost like a slushy, but not quite a slushy. And IT just brings me happiness, especially when I just did a super long run in the texas heat. And boys that he coming that summer is coming the hundred degrees, the one of five and tense, those are ten, twelve, fifteen around and heat.

There's a part of me that hates IT. There's a part of me that loves IT. And every part of is Better for having done IT.

Anyway, I love age. You won, especially after a long run. They'll give you one month, supply a fish oil when you sign up a drink A G one dog comm lash legs.

This is a treatment podcasts to supported. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Kevin .

spacey.

You played a serial killer in the movie seven. Your performance was one of, if not the greatest portrait of a murder on screen ever. What was your process of becoming him? Dando the server.

The truth is I didn't get the part. Um I had been in los Angeles making a couple of films, a swimming sharks and usual suspects and then I did a film called outbreak that more in framing was in and I went into addition for David venture and probably late november of .

ninety four and I addition .

for this part and didn't get IT and I went back to new york and I think they started shooting like december twelve. And i'm in new york.

I'm back in my my wonderful apartment on west twelve street and my mom has come to visit for Christmas and it's december twenty third and it's like seven o'clock at night in my phone rings and its annual couple son, who's the producer of seven and he's very jovial, is very friendly, is how you doing and I said, fine and he said, listening. Remember that film? You came in four seven.

He, well, turns out that we hired an actor and we started shooting. And then yesterday David fired him, and David would like you to get on a plane on sunday and come to our anti and start shooting on tuesday. And I was like. okay. IT would have be imposing to say, can I read IT again because it's it's been a while now and i'd like .

to so .

they sent a script over I read the scrip that night .

I thought .

about IT um and I I had this feeling I I can't even quite describe IT, but I had this feeling that IT would be really good if I didn't take billing in the film. In the reason I felt that was because I knew that by the time this film would come out, IT would be the last one of the three movies that I just shot, the fourth one. And if any of those films broke through or did, well, if I was going to be brad pitt, more from going to patch and Kevin spacey, and you don't show up for the first twenty five, thirty, forty minutes, people going to figure out how you're playing.

So people should know that you are the sero. You play the serial killer in the movie. And steel killer shows up my more than half way to the last one.

And we say, billing is like the posters, the V H, S. Come everything. You're gone.

You're not there, not there. And so newland cinema, uh, told me to go fuck myself um that they absolutely could use my picture in my image. And this became a little bit of a, i'd say, twenty four our conversation and IT was venture who said, I actually think this is a really cool idea.

So the compromise was, i'm the first credit at the end of the movie when the credit start. So I got on a plane on that sunday, and I fluid loss Angeles, and I win into where they were shooting. And I went into the makeup room, and David venture was there, and we were talking about, what should I do? How should I? How should I look? And I just had my hair short for outbreak as as playing a military, a character.

And I just looked at the headrest and I said, you have a razor. And then he went, are you kidding? I said, no, if you shave your head or shit mine so we both shaved their heads. And then I started shooting the next day. So my long .

winded answer .

to your question is that I didn't have that much time to think about how to build that character. What I think in the end venture was able to do so brilliantly with such error was true. Set the audience up to meet this character.

I think the the last scene, the ending scene and the car ride leading up to IT. Well, it's mostly I knew in in conversation with Morgan freman and rapid is one of the greatest scenes in film history, so people somehow didn't see the movie. There's these five murders that happened that are inspired by five of the seven deadly sins. And the the ending scene is inspired, represents the last two deadly scenes. And there's .

this consulting .

about you in your performance is just terrifying, maybe in contrast with bread peace performance that's also really strong. But that is the contrast. In the contrast is the terrifying a sense that you get in the audience that builds up to the twist at the end or the surprise at the end with the famous what's in the box from brad pit? That is red pits? Character's wife, her head?

Yeah, I, I, I can really .

only tell you that while we were shooting that scene in the car, while we were out in the in the desert, in that place, for all those electrical wires, were a David just kept saying less too less and I just tried to, I mean, he remember him up, saying to me, remember you're in control like you are going to win and knowing that should allow you to have tremendous confidence. And I just followed that lead.

And I I just think it's the kind of film that so many of the elements that had been at work from the beginning of the movie, terms of its style, in terms of how he built this terror, in terms of how he built for the audience, a sense of this person being one of the scariest people that might ever encounter. Um IT is IT really allowed me to be able to not have to do that much, just say the words and mean them. And I think IT also is it's an example of what.

Makes tragedy so. difficult. I mean, you know, very often tragedy is people Operating without enough information. They don't have all the facts, rummy and Juliet, they don't have all the facts. They don't know what we know as an audience.

And so in the end, weather bad pitch character ends up shooting john do or turning the gun on himself, which was a discussion. I mean, they were there were a number of alternative endings that were discussed. Um nothing ends up being tied up in a nice little bow. IT is complicated and shows how nobody wins in the end. When you're not Operating with all the information.

when you say, say the words and mean them, what does IT mean .

that mean .

i've i've been .

very fortunate to be directed by venture a couple of times. And he would say to me sometimes I don't believe a thing that is coming out of your mouth. Shall we try IT again and .

you go OK? Yeah.

we can try to get. And sometimes he'll do take. And then you'll look to see if he has any added a genius to to, to hand.

You may just go, let's do again, and then let's do again. And sometimes I I, I say this in all humility. He's literally trying to beat the acting out of you. And and by continually saying to the end to again and not giving you any specifics, he is, he is systematically sharing you of all pretense of all, you know, because you look very often, you know, actors.

We come in on the sad and we've thought about the scene and we ve worked out, you know, i've got this prop and am going to do the thing with a, can you know, all these thing of the T. M, and to do a thing with the thing that and David is the kind of dator where he just wants you to stop adding all that crap and just say the words and say them quickly and mean them. And IT takes a while to get to that place.

I'll tell you a story, and this is a story I just love because it's in the exactly the same warehouse. So jack lemons first movie was a film code that should happen to you and was directed by George cooker. And jack tells the story, and I was just an incredibly charming story to heard jack tell.

He said, so I am doing this picture in a limited a. This is a torridly c part for me, and i'm doing a seine. It's on my first day. It's in my first day and it's a horrific thing and he goes, we we do the first take and and George a coker comes up to me.

He is a jack I said, yeah he said, could you do that? Let's do another one, but do a little less in this one and you actually A A little less, a little less than what I just did he said, yeah, just little less so because we do another take and and I think, boy, that was IT, I mean, let you go home and coker walked up doing he said, jack, and i'd let you do another one this time, just a little bit less and he actually let less than what I just did. Now he said he had just a little bit less.

He goes on, okay, so he didn't to take and you could you to jack, just a little bit less and jack said, be a little less than what I just did. He said, yes, he did. What if I do with any less? I'm not going to be acting. The picker said, exactly, jack, exactly.

I think I guess what you're saying is it's extremely difficult to get to the the bottom of a little less because the power, if we just stick even on seven of your performance is in the tiny st of subways. Like when you say, oh, you didn't know when you turn your head a little bit and a little bit like the the little bit may be a glimmer of a smile appears in your face that's subtilty that's less that's hard to get to I I .

suppose yeah and also because I I, I, I so well remember, I think the word of bread did in and and also Morgan did in that same, but the word that brad had to do where he had to go.

I remember rehearsal with him as we all staying at this little hotel nearby that location, and we rehearsal the night before we started shooting that I just I mean, I was just incredible to see the levels of emotions here to go through, and then the decision of what do I do? Because if I do what he wants me to do, then he wins. But if I don't do IT, then I, what kind of a man, husband and I, uh, I just not. He did really incredible works. IT was also not easy to not react to the to the power of what he was throwing at me because he thought I was an extraordinary um a really extraordinary scene.

So what's IT like being in that scene? So you rapid Morgan freeman and rap is going over the top just having a mental breakdown and is wearing these extremely difficile moral choices as you're same basis creaming and in pain and tormented while you're very subtle smiling in terms of the riding .

in in terms of what the characters had to do is IT was an incredible combination of how this character could. Manipulate in the way that he did and and in the end, succeed.

You mention venture likes to do a lot of takes to see the famous thing about David venture. So what are the person kind of that? I think I read that he does some crazy amount. He ever just twenty five, sixty five h takes and most directors do less than ten.

So yet sometimes it's timing, sometimes it's literally he has a stop watch and his he's timing how long as seen is taking and then he'll say you need to take a minute off this scene, a minute, just a minute of the scene I wanted to move like this. So let's pick IT up. Let's pick up th Epace. Let's take, let's see if we can take a minute of .

why the speed, why? Why, say fast is the important thing for anything?

I think because venture hates .

indulgence and he wants .

he wants people to talk the way they do in life, which is, you know, we don't take. Big dramatic posses, yeah, right? We speak, we speak. We say what we want know.

And I guess actors like the dramatic posses and indulge in the .

dramatic like dramatic posses. I mean, you go back in each student of acting, you go back to the thirties, in the fourteen fifties, the speed at which actor spoke not just in the comedy, which of course you know you look at any press and surge as movie in its incredible health people are talking and how and how funny things are when they happen that fast um but then you know acting styles changed.

We gone into a different kind of thing in the late fifties and sixties. And you know a lot of actors are feeling IT, which is i'm not saying it's it's a it's a bad thing. It's just that if you want to .

keep .

an audience engaged, as venture does, and i'd believe successfully does in all of his work, pace, timing, movement, clarity, speed are adorable to achieve.

And all of that he wants the actor to be as natural possible to strip away all the bullshit of acting yeah, and become human.

Look, i've been lucky with other directors. Cement is a similar. I remember when I walked in to maybe the first rehearsal for Richard, the third that we were doing, I had brought with me a canopy of of elements that my Richard was going to suffer from.

And sam eventually widdle did down to like three like maybe your ARM and maybe think and maybe your leg but let's get rid of the other ten things that you run into the room because I was know so excited to you know capture this character. So you know very often a travel, none is this way. A lot, a lot of onder ful directors i've worked with, they're really good at helping you trim and edit.

David venture said about you, he's talking in general thing, but also specifically in the moment of house cars, said that you have exceptional skills, both as an actor and as a performer, which he says are different things. So he defines the former's dramatization of a text than the latter as the seduction of an audience. Do you see a wisdom in that distinction? And what does that take to do both the dramatization of attacks, the seduction of audience?

Those are two very interesting descriptions. Um when I think I guess when I think performer, I tend to think entertaining, I tend to think I tend to think comedy, I tend to think winning over an audience. I tend to think there's something about that quality of wanting to of wanting to have people enjoy themselves um and when you settle that against what maybe he means as an actor, which is which is which is more dramatic or more or text driven more um look I i've .

always believe .

that my that my job not every actor feels this way but my job the way that i've looked at IT is that my job is to serve the writing. And that if I serve the writing, I will up, in a sense, serve myself because i'll be in the right world, i'll be in the right context, i'll be in the right style. I'll have embraced what are directors? You know, it's not my painting.

It's someone else is painting. I am a series of colors and someone else is painting. And the parameter for me has always been that when people stop me and talk to me about a character played and reference their name as if they actually exist, that's when I feel like i've gotten .

close to doing my job yeah one of the chAllenges for me in this conversation is remembering that your name is Kevin no Frank or john or any of these characters because they live .

deeply in the psyche to me that's the greatest that's the greatest um compliment for me as an actor. Um I love being able to go. I mean.

when I think about.

Performers who inspire me. And I remember when I was Young and I was introduced, spent a Tracy Henry, found a Katherine happen. I just, I believe that they were, I knew nothing about them. They were just these extraordinary characters doing this extraordinary stuff. And then I think more. Recently contemporary when I think if the words that phillip sy or hofman did and he's leger and people that that when I think about what they could be doing, what they could do, what they would have done had they stayed with us, i'm so i'm so excited when I when I go into a cinema or I go to play and I completely untaken to some place that I believe exists and characters that that become real.

And those characters become like lifelong companions, like for me, they travel with you. And even if it's the darkest aspects of human nature, there was, there is almost like, I feel like I almost met them, then got to know them, then gotten to become like friends with them, almost handful lector, whether or or force gone. I mean, I feel like i'm like best friends with forrest gump. I know the guy and I guess he's played by some guy name tom, but like force gum is the guy and friends with and I think everybody feels like that when they are in audience with great characters, they just kind of that become part of you in some way, the the good.

the bad and the ugly of them. One of the things that I, that I feel that I try to do in my work is .

when I read .

something for the first time, when I read a script replay. And I am absolutely devastated by IT. IT is IT is the most extraordinary, most beautiful, the most life of firming or terrifying. It's then a process weirdly, of working backwards because I want to a work in such a way that that's the experience I give to the audience when they first see IT that they have the experience I had when I read IT.

I remember that there's meant times in the creative process when something was pointed out to me or something was I I member was doing a play, and I was having this really tough time with a one of the last scenes in the play. And I just couldn't figure that out. I was in rehearsal, and although we had a director in that play, I I called another, a friend of man who was also director, and I and I had him come over and I said, look, the scene.

I'm just having the toughest. I cannot seem to crack the scene. And so we we read IT through a couple of times. And then this wonderful director and john one back, I would eventually direct me in a film called the big koona. But this is before that he said to make the most incredible thing.

He has said, all right, what's the last line you have in this scene before you fall over and fall asleep? And I said, the last line is a that last drink, the old K O, anyone? Okay, I want you to think about what that line actually means and then work backwards.

And so he left.

and I sort of was left with this. What like, what does that mean? I'm I supposed and then like a couple of the days when buy a couple of days when 他 都 可以 说 悉， what is that line actually?

Meanwhile that lets drink the old K O, K, O. It's knockout, which is a boxing term, the only boxing term the writer uses in the play. And then I went back and I realized my friend was so smart and so incredible to said, ask a question you haven't thought of asking yet.

I realized that the player I wrote the last round, the eighth round, between these two brothers and IT, was a fight, physical as well as emotional. And when I brought that into the rehearsal al room to the directors doing their play, he liked that idea. And we staged that scene as if IT was the eight throne, although audience couldn't none that.

But just what I loved about that was that somebody said to me, ask yourself a question you haven't asked yourself yet. What does that line mean? And then work backwards.

What is that like A A catalyst for thinking about what is magical about this play? This story is narrative that that's what that is like thinking backwards what .

that's what that does yeah and but also because it's just it's this incredible why did I think to ask that question myself? That's what you have directors for that what you have you know so many places where ideas can come from um but that just illustrates that even though in my brain I O I always like to work backwards and I missed IT in that one and i'm very grateful to my to my friend for having pushed me into being able to realize what that .

mountain to ask the interesting question. I like the the poetry and the humility. I'm just a series of collision.

Someone else is painting. Not a good line. Ah that said, you've talked about the provisions. You said that it's all about the ability to do IT again and again and again and yet never make IT same. And he also just said that you you are trying to stay true to the text. So where's the room for the in prove sation that is never the same.

Well, there's two slightly different context I think. One is in the rehearsal room, improvisation could be a wonderful device. I mean, same man is, for example, will start, uh, he'll start a scene. And he he does this wonderful thing, brings rugs and he brings chairs and sofas in and this is, well, let's let's put let's put two chairs here and here you guys, let's starting these chairs far apart from each other.

Let's see what happens with the scene if if you're that far part and so we will do the scene that way and then you guys, okay, um let's bring a rugged in and let's bring these chairs much closer and let's see what happens if if if the space of the space between you is and so then you you try that way and then you know a little harder and shakespeare improve. But in any situation where you you want to try and see where where could the singing go? Where would the single if I didn't make that choice? Where would the single if I made this choice? Where were the single I didn't say that or I said something else.

So that's how improved can be a valuable process to learn um about limits and and boundaries um and what's going on with A A character that somehow you discover in in in trying something that isn't on the page. Then there's a different thing, which is the trying to make IT fresh and trying to make IT new. And that is really a reference to theater 嗯。 I'll put IT to this way.

Anybody loves sports.

right? So you go and you watch on pech watch 了 tennis game， you watch basketball, you watch football. Yeah, the rules are the same, but it's a different game every time you're out on that court around that field. It's no different in theater. Yes, it's the same lines. Maybe even blocking is similar, but what's different is attack intention, how you are growing in a role and watching your fellow actors grow in theirs and how every night is a new audience and they're reacting differently and you literally where you can go from week one of performances in a play, two week twelve.

His extraordinary.

And the difference between theater and film is that no matter how good someone might think you are .

in a movie.

you'll never .

be any Better.

It's frozen. Whether I can be Better a more night than I was tonight, I can be Better in a week than I was tonight. IT is a living, breathing, shifting, changing, growing thing every single day.

But also there, there's no safety net. If you fuck you up, everybody gets to see you do that.

And if you start giggs on stage, everyone gets to see you do that, to which I am very guilty of.

I mean, there is something a of a seduction of an audience in theater even more intense than there is when you're talking about film, is I got a chance to watch the documentary now in the wings on the world stage, which is, uh, behind the scenes of you mention, uh, you teaming up with salman as in twenty years eleven to stage Richard third, a play by William shakespeare.

I was also surprised to learn you haven't really done much shakespeare, at least you said that in the in the movie. But there's a lot of interesting behind the scene stuff there. First, all the coordinate of .

everybody .

holic the bond theatre creates, especially you traveling. But the another interesting thing you mention with the chairs of sam is trying different stuff. IT seem like everybody was really opened a trying stuff, embarrassing themselves, taking risks, all that I supposed as part of acting in general. But theatre especially, just take risks in OK. Embarrassed should at yourself, including the director.

It's also because you become a family, you know, it's unlike a movie where, you know, I might have a scene with so and so on this day and then another scene with them in a weekend to have. And then that's the seems we have an all movie together every single day when you show up in the rusal room, it's the whole company. You're all up for IT every day.

You're learning, you're growing, you're trying. And and there is a an incredible trust that happens. And I was of course fortunate that that some of the some of the things I learned and observed about being a part of that family, being included in their family and and being apart of creating that family, I I was able to observe from from people like jack lemon, who who LED many companies that that I was fortunate to to work in and and and be part of.

There's also a sad moment where at the end, everybody is really sad to say goodbye because you do for my family and then is over.

I guess somebody .

said that that's just part of theater like, I mean, there's kind of assume goodbye and this .

is IT yeah also there are sometimes when like six months later i'll wake up middle the night ago that's .

not to play that .

scene yeah oh god, I just finally figured that out.

So maybe you could speak a little more to that. What's the difference of team film acting in live theater acting?

I don't really think there is any I think there's just you eventually learn about yourself on film. You know, when I first did like my first episode of the equalizer, um you know it's just it's just as horrible, is just so bad but I didn't know about myself. I didn't so slowly you begin to learn about yourself.

But I think good acting is good acting. And I think that you know if you if a cameras right here, you you know that you're your front row is also your back row. You just don't have to you don't have to do so much. There is, in theory, a particular kind of energy, almost like an athlete that you have to have vocally to be able to get up some performance is a week and never lose your voice and always be there and always be alive and always be doing the best work you can that you just don't require in film. You know you don't have to have the same um IT just doesn't require the same, a kind of staminate that doing applied does IT just .

feels like also on dear, you have to become the character more intensely because you can't take a break. You can take a Better break. You are like on stage there's no this is you yeah .

but you have no idea what's going on on stage with the actors I mean, I I I I have literally laugh through speeches that I had to give because my fellow actors were putting carrots up their nose. Broccoli and ears are doing whatever they were doing to make me laugh. So there's just having fun.

They're having the time of their life. And by the way, judy and he is the worst giggler of all. Yeah and they had to bring the curtain down on her magi Smith because they were laughing so hard they could not continue the play. So even when .

you're doing like a dramatic model, logue is still there are still up with the stuff. Yes, that's great. That's good to know.

You also said interesting line that improvisation helps you learn about the character. Can you explain that? So like through may be playing with the difference. Ways of saying the words are the different ways to bring the words to life. You get to learn about yourself about the charity.

your plan IT can be helpful but improves. I'm a big such a big believer in the in the the writing and serving the writing and doing the words the writer rote um that improve for for me unless you're just doing like comedy and you know like I mean I love improvin in comedy, it's it's brilliant um so much fun to watch people just come up with something right there.

Um but you know that's where you're looking for lambs and you you're specifically in a little scene that's being created but I think he promise has has had value um but I I I have not experienced as much in doing plays um as I have sometimes in doing in doing film where you you'll start off rehearsin and a direction may then I let just go off book and see what happens and I ve had moments in film where someone one off book and IT was terrifying. There was a scene I had in glancy glass. Where the character I play has has fucked something up, just screwed something up.

And peco is live IT. And so we at the scene where l is walking like this and the camera is moving with him, and he is showing me a new isle. And in the middle of the take, all starts talking about me. Or .

Kevin.

you don't think we know how you got this job. You don't think we know who dig ubn socket on to get this part in this movie. And i'm now, i'm literally like, I don't know what the hell is happening, but i'm reacting.

We got the end of that take. I'll walked up to anyone that was so good oh my god, that was so good. Just so you know the sound, I asked them, not the record.

So you are no dialed. So mean. Look, you look like a correct and I was like, yeah and IT was actually an incredibly generous thing that he gave me so that I would react.

oh, wow, did they use the shot because you were shot.

IT was my close up. yeah. And yeah, that's the take that was an .

intense right? I mean, what was that like if you can just linger on that just that intense scene without pacino?

Well, he's the reason I got the movie. A lot of people might think if because jack was in the film, that he had something to do with that. But actually, I was doing a player, ld lost and Young chers on broadway.

And we had the same dresser who worked with him. A grown in Laura was wonderful lauber. And he told all that he should come and see this play, because he wanted to see me in this play as pointing this gangsters fun, fun, fun part.

So I didn't know patch ino came on some night and saw this play. And then, like, three days later, I got ta call a command audition for this ginger gin rose, which of course I knew is a play. David means play.

And then. I auditioned Jamie folie was the director who would eventually direct a bunch of house cards. Wonderful one derful guy. And I got the part. Well, I didn't quite get the part. They were going to bring together the actors that they thought they're going to the porch to on a saturday at our office and they asked me if I would come and do a read through and I said, who's going to be there and they said, well, so one on one and jack lemons flying and I said, don't tell mr.

Lemon that i'm doing the read through, is that possible? And i'm sure so i'll never forget this jacket was sitting in a chair and pechina on office doing the new york cross were was always eat IT everyday. And I walked in the door and he went, oh, jesus, Chris is IT possible, you can to get a job without me i'm so tired of hold up your end of IT oh my god IT so that I got the job job because of a pacco and and know I was IT was IT was really one of the first major roles that I ever had a film and, you know, to be working with that group .

yeah that's like one of the greatest ensemble cast ever. We got Albertina, jack leman, Alberta Allen aran and hair. You a Johnson Price is just incredible. And I would have to say, and maybe you can comment, you've talked about how how much of a mentor and friend, jack man, has been that one of his greatest performances ever. R you have a scene at the end of the movie with him that was really powerful.

If they firing on all cylinders, your playing the stain to perfection, and he's playing desperation to perfection, what is seen? What is that like? Just like at the top of your game.

the two of you, well, by that time we had done longest journey tonight in the theatre. We've done a many series called the murder, my figure on abc. We've done a film called dad, the guide of goal per directed with ted dancing.

So this was the fourth time we were working together and we knew each other. We become, we become my father figure. And and I don't know if you know that I originally met jack lemon when I was very, very Young.

He was doing a production of the mark perform of a shadow casey player june in the payroll with watermark w and marine stable in and on a saturday in december of one thousand nine seventy four, my junior high school drama class went to a workshop. IT was called how to audition. And we did.

This works out. Many schools in seven california were part of this drama tea association. So we got these incredible experiences of being able to go see professional productions and be involved in these workshops or festivals.

So I had to get up and due monolog in front. Mister lemon, when I was thirteen years old, and he walked up to me at the end of that, he put his hand on my shelter. He said, that was a chacha.

terrific. He said, no, I everything i've been talking about, uh, did yet. What's your name? I said, kv, we let me tell you something.

When you get finish with high schools, i'm sure you're going to go on and do theater. You should go to new york and you should started being an active, because this is what you're meant to do with your life. And he was like an idle.

And twelve years later, I read in the near times that he was coming to broadway to do this production of a ongles journey tonight, a year in some months after I read this article, and I was like, i'm going to play Jamie in that production. And I then with a lot of opposition, so the castle dreda didn't want to see me. They they said that the director, john athan Miller, wanted movie actors to play the two sons. And .

ultimately.

I eh, I found out the john of the million, the director was coming to new york to do a series of lectures at Alice toy hall. And I went to try to figure out how I could maybe meet him. And I was sitting in that theater, listening to this incredible actually he was doing in sitting next to me was an elderly woman. I mean, elderly, eighty something in SHE was a sleep.

But sticking .

out of her handbag, which was on the floor.

was an.

Invitation to a cocktail reception and honor doctor john of the Miller. And so I I thought. You know, she's tired. She's probably going to go home. So I, I, I took that and walked into this cuttle reception and ultimately went over the doctor, Miller, who was incredibly kind and said, sit down up. I was very good.

What brings Young people to my lectures? And I said him, you general from here and was like, what? I've always wanted to meet him, we're ready.

And I told him that i've been trying for seven months to get an audition for a longer journey and that his american castrati were telling my agents that he wanted big american movie stars. And at that moment he turned, and he saw one of those cases, atr, who was there that night. I knew he was gonna in new york starting auditions that week, and he was staring daggers at me.

And he just got IT and he said, someone have a pen. He took a little paper, started ranking. Listen, Kevin, there there are many situations in which cain juges have a lot of say, and a lot of power and a lot flavored.

And then there are other situations where they just take directories messages. And on this one, they're taking my messages. This is where i'm staying.

Make sure your people get to me. We start additions on thursday. And on thursday, I had an opportunity to come in in audition for this play that i've been working on, in preparing. And at the end of IT, I did force scenes.

At the end of IT, he said to me that unless someone else came in and blew him against the wall like I had just done, as far as he was concerned, I pretty much had the part. But I couldn't tell my agents that yet because I had to come back and read with mr. lemon.

And so three months later, in August of one thousand and eighty five, I found myself in a room which jacked limit again at eight ninety broadway, which is where there were a lot of broadway plays. And we did four scenes together, and I was toppling over, and I was pushing him. I was, I was relentless, and we'll never forget.

At the end of that.

lemon came over to me. He put his hand on my shelter. He said, that was, you touch a terrific.

I never thought we would find the right kid, but he, he just cried. What the hell was that? And I ended up spending the next year of my life with that men.

So IT turns out he was right.

Yeah.

this world works in mysterious ways. IT also speaks to the fact of the power of somebody. You look up to giving words of enlargement because those can just reverberate through your whole life. And just like make the path clear.

i've always we used to, we used to joke that if every contract came with a jack lemon clause, that would be a more beautiful world.

Beautiful, said jack lin is one of the greatest actors ever. What do you think makes himself damn good?

晚安。

I think he I think he truly set out in his life to accomplish what his father said him on his death bed. Father was dies. Father was by that. I called the donet king in boston and um not in the entertain a business at all.

Is that literally on the donate company? And when he was passing away, jack said the last thing my father said he was go out there and spread little sunshine. And I truly think .

that's what jack loved to do.

I remember this and I don't know this is will answer your question, but I think it's revealing about what he is able to do and what he was able to do and how that ultimately influenced what I was able to do. Saunders had never directed a film before american beauty. And so what he did was he took the best elements of the theatre and applied them to the process.

So we were hurt. Ed IT like a play in a sound stage where everything was laid out, like I would be in a play. And this cultural ly here, and he sent .

me a couple .

of tapes. He'd sent me two cut tapes, one that he like to call pre lester before he begins to move any direction, and then post lester. And they just were different songs.

And many said to me one day, and I think always thought this was brilliant of sam to use lemon, knowing what lemon meant to me, he said, then, when was the last time you watch the apartment? And I said, I don't know. I just, I love that movie so much because I want you to watch IT again. And then let's talk. So I want I watched the .

movie again .

and we sit down and sam said. What lemon does in that film is incredible because there is never a moment in the movie where we see him change. He just evolves and he becomes the man he becomes because of the experiences that he has to the course of the film.

But there's this remarkable consistency in who he becomes, and that's what I need you to do, is lester. I don't want the audience to ever see him change. I want him to a fall.

And so we did some first of all, was just a great direction. And the second of all, we did some things that people don't know we did to aid that gradual shift of that man's character. First of all, I had to be in the best shape from the beginning of the movie because we didn't shoot in sequence.

So I was in this crazy shape. I this wonderful trainer in mictlan hood just was incredible. But so what we did was, in order to then show this gradual shift, was I had three different hair pieces, I had three different kinds of customs of different colors and sizes, and I had different makeup.

So in the beginning, I was wearing a kind of drab, dull, slightly, you know, uninspired hair, peace, and my makeup was kind of gray and boring. And I was a little bit, there were times when I was like, too much like this. And same ago, Kevin, you look like walter method.

Would you please stand up a little bit where sort of midway through at this point? And then at a certain point, the week changed, and I had little highlights and had a little more color, a little more. The makeup became a little the the suits got a little tired.

And then finally a third wire that was golden highlights and sunshine and and, you know, rosy cheeks and tight fit. And these are what we call theatrical tricks. You, this is, this is how you, an audience doesn't, you know, it's happening. But IT is this gradual. And I just always felt that that was such A A brilliant way because .

he knew .

what I felt about jack. And when you watch the apartment, that is extraordinary, that he doesn't ever change. He just so i'm and. In fact, I I thanked jack when I want the Oscar and.

I did my thank you speech, and I walked off stage, and I remember had to sit down for a moment because I didn't want to go. I didn't want to go to the press room because I wanted to see if sam was gonna win. And so I was waiting in my phone ring and IT was lemon.

He said here, a son of a bit. And I said what he was. I, first of all, IT, congratulations and thanks for thanking me cause, you know, god knows you couldn't done IT without me is second of all, because you do know how long IT took me to win from supporting actor. I want IT from mister robberts and IT took me like ten twelve years to when Oscar you did .

IT in four years son of a bit yeah the .

apartment was.

I mean, is widely considered one of the greatest movies ever. People sometimes referred to as the comedy, which is an interesting kind of classification. I suppose that's a lesson about company is the best the best comedy is the one is basically a tragedy.

Well, I mean, like some people think clock ork oranges a comedy and i'm not saying some good loves. yes.

I mean, yeah is what's that line between ah come tragedy for you?

Well, if if it's a line, it's a line ee cross all the time, because i've tried always to find the humor. Unexpected, sometimes maybe IT appropriate, sometimes maybe shocking. But i've tried, I think, almost every dramatic role, i've had to have a sense of humor and to be able to bring that along with everything else that is serious, because, Frankly, that's how we deal with stuff in life. You know.

I think salmon is actually said in the now documentary something like with great theory, with with great stories, you find humour on the journey to the heart of darkness, something like .

this .

very point.

But i'm sorry, I can't be that. I'm very sorry.

but it's true. I mean, the people have interacted in this world of being to war zone .

and .

the ones who have lost the most and suffered the most. I usually the ones we're able to, uh, make jokes. The quick kest and the jokes are often dark and absurd, cost every single line. No political correctness.

All of that. sure. Well, I think you know it's like the great marital show or they can stop gigabit at the clowns funeral.

I mean, it's it's just one of the great episode. Ver giggling at a funeral is as bad as farting at a funeral. You know i'm i'm sure that there's some people .

have done both man, imagine american beauty and the idea of not changing but evolving. That's really interesting because that movie is about like finding yourself. So it's a pilsbury performed movie, is about various characters in their own ways, finding their own identity in the world where may be a system, a materialistic system, that wants to be like everyone else. And so I mean, less to is really transformed the author of the movie. And you're just saying the chAllenge there is they still be the same human being fundamentally.

Yeah and I also think that the film was powerful because you had three very honest and genuine portrait of Young people and then you had less behaving like a Young person um doing things that we're unexpected and and I think that um.

The honesty with which is dealt with those issues that those teenagers were going through and the honest do with what you dealt with what lester was going through um I think are some of the reasons why the film had the response that I did from so many people. I mean, I used to get stopped. And some of that said to me, when I first saw american beauty, I was married. And the second time I thought I wasn't.

I was like.

what we were trying to increase the dirt know I wasn't our attention, but IT is interesting how so many people have those kinds of crazy fantasies. And what I admired so much about who lester was as a person, why I wanted to play him, is because in the end, he makes the right decision.

I think a lot of people live lives of quiet desperation in a, in a job they don't like, in a marriage they are unhappy and and to see somebody living that life and then saying fucked in every way possible, and not just in a cynical way, but a way that opens them, opens less drop. To see the beauty in the world, as you know, the beauty in american beauty is.

well, you know, you may have to black mail your boss to get there, but you know.

and in that there's a bunch of humor also in the in the anger and the in the absurd of serve, taking a stand against the conformity of life. There's this humor. And I read somewhere that the scene, the dinner scene, which is kind of play like aware lesters slams the plate against the wall, was improvised by you. The the swiming of the play against the wall no no, absolutely .

internet, absolutely written and and directed. Uh um I can't take credit for that the .

play okay. Well, those a there's a genius interaction there.

They're about the dinner table and losing your share at the dinner table, having a fight and losing your share at the dinner table where IT, where else like yellow stone was another situation where is a family at the dinner table? And then one of them says, fucking, i'm not eating this anymore and i'm going to create a scene, right? It's a beautiful kind of environment for dramatically .

or nicholson in the shining. Here's here's some family seems gonna ride in that movie.

The contrast between you and a net banning in that scene creates the genius that seem. So how much of acting is the dance between two actors?

Well.

with a net.

I just adored working with her. And we were the two actors that sam wanted from the very beginning, much against the will of the heros who wanted other actors to play those roles. but. I've known a net .

since .

we did a screen test together from new form for a film he did of the lily's own danger rules. Movie was a different film from that one, but he was the same story. And i've always thought he is just remarkable and I think that the work sheet in that film, the relationship that um we were able to build um for me the saddest part of that success was that he didn't want the Oscar and I felt he should have what what kind of interesting direction did you .

get from from Samantha in how you approach playing last year in a different how to take on the different scenes this a lot of this brilliant .

scenes in that movie well i'll share with your story that most people don't know um which is our first two days of shooting were in smiles the place where I get a job in fast food place yeah it's the burger joy and I guess he was like maybe the third day or the fourth day shooting we'd now done that and I said the sam so how how are the daily you know how how do they look because which ones I sit well the first smiles because oh um their shit and I was yeah know how where there he does no shit.

I hate them. I hate everything about them. I hate the customs.

I hate the location. I hate that you're inside. I hate the way you acted. I hate everything but script. So i've gone back to the studio and asked them if we can result the first two days. And like sam, this is your very first movie. You're going back to Stephen bilberry and saying, I need to reach ot the the first two days entirely even .

even yeah and that's .

exactly what we did. A couple of weeks later, they decided that IT was now a drive through because a net, and Peter galer used to come in to the place and ordered from the counter. Now sam decided IT has to be a drive through.

You have to be in the window of the drive through. Change the costumes. And we really shot .

those first two days.

And sam said I was actually a moment of incredible confidence because he said the worst thing that could possibly happened happened in my first two days. And after that I was like, I know what i'm doing and I knew ahead to be shoot IT and I was absolutely right.

And I guess that's what a great director must do to have the guts in that moment to reach ot everything. That's a pretty gutty move.

Two other little things to share with you about sam, but the way he is, you wouldn't know IT. But the original script opened and closed with a trial. Ricky was accused of lester's murder.

And the movie was book ended by this trial, very different movie, which they shot the entire trial four weeks, right? And I used to fly in my dreams. You know, there's opening shots over the neighbourhood.

I used to come into the shots in my bathroom flying. And then when I hit the ground and the newspaper was thrown at me by the newspaper guy and I caught IT, the alarm would go off and I wake up in bed. I spent five days being hung by wires and filming these sequences of flying through my dreams.

And sam said to me, yeah, the flying sequences are all gone and the trial is gone. And I was like, what? What are you talking about? And here's my other little favorite ite story, let's sam.

And that when we were shooting in the valley, one of those places I flew, this was an indoor set. Sam said to me, in the morning hate lunch, I just want to record a guide track of all the log, all of your narration, because they just needed an editing as a guide. And I said, sure.

So remember, we came outside of this in this hallway where I had a addressing room in this little studio, iran. And sam had like a cassette per quarter and like a little microphone, and we put them on the floor and he pushed record. And I read the entire.

And I never did IT again. That's the narrow in the movie because sam said when he listen to IT, I wasn't trying to do anything. He did you no idea where these things were going, where they were going to be placed, what they were?

Onna, mean, you just read IT so innocently, so purely, so directly that I knew if I brought you into a studio and put headphones on you and had you do IT again, that would change the ease with which you done IT. And so they just fixed all of the problems that they have in this little concept. And that is the way I did IT. And the only time I did IT was in this little hallway.

And once again, a great performance lies in being a doing less. Yeah, the innocence in the purity .

he knew I would have coming to the studio and fuck up.

yeah. What do you think about the notion of beauty that permeate american beauty? What do you think that team is with the roses, with the rose peddles the the characters that are living this mundane existence, slowly opening their eyes up to a what is beautiful life.

So it's funny. I don't think of the roses and I don't think of her body in the poster, and I don't think of those things is the. Um I think of the bag. I think that. There are things .

we miss that .

are right in front of us that are truly beautiful.

the little things, the simple things.

Yeah, I fact, i'll even even tell you something that I always not so incredible. When we shot the scenes in the office where lessor worked the job hated, there was a bulleting board behind me on a wall. And someone who is watching a cut or early daily who is in the marketing department saw that someone had cut out little piece of paper in, stuck at. And IT said, look closer. And they .

presented that .

to sam as the idea of what that that could go on the poster, the idea of looking closer was such .

a billion idea.

But he wasn't. I mean, IT wasn't like, wasn't in the script. IT was just on a wall behind me.

And someone happened to zoom in on IT and see IT and thought, that's what this movies about. This movie is about taking the time to look closer. And I think that in itself is just beautiful.

Mortality also promise the film no IT starts with acknowledging that death is on the way that year later, time is finite. Everything about your own death. Scared with.

When I was .

at my lowest point.

yes, IT scared me.

what? What does that fear look like? what? What's the nature of the fear? What are you afraid of?

That there's no way out. That there's no answer.

That nothing makes sense.

See, the interest thing about lester is facing the same fear. He seemed to be some how liberated and accepted everything yeah then saw the video of IT .

because he got there. He was given the opportunity to to reinvent himself and to and to try things. You'd never tried to ask questions he had never asked two.

To trust his instinct and to become the best version of himself he could become. And so dick nan die, who is, has become an extraordinary friend of mine, dicis ninety eight years old. And he says, you know, if I know I was going to live this long about I taking Better .

care myself when .

I spend time with him, I just moved by every day. You know, he gets up and he goes, it's a good day. I woke up and I learned a lot about, I have A A different feeling about death now than I did seven years ago.

And i'm on the path to being able to be in a place where i've resolved the things I needed to resolve and went want to probably get to all of IT in my lifetime. But I certainly would like to be a place where if I were, if I were a dropped, that tomorrow he would have been an amazing life.

So lester got there. Sounds like take that. I got there.

He tried to get there. sure. You said you fear death at the lowest point. What was the lowest point?

IT was november first of twenty seventeen, and then thanksgiving day of that same year.

So let's talk about IT. Let's talk about this dark time. Let's talk about the sexual allegations against you that LED to you being cancelled.

Well, well, the entire world for the last seven years, I would like to personally understand the since the bad things you did and the bad things you didn't do. So I also should say that the thing I hope to do here to. Give respect due process, innocent until proven guilty, that the mass historian machine of the internet and click by journalism doesn't do. So here's what I understand.

There were criminal .

and civil trials brought against you, including the one that started at all when Anthony wrapped suit you for forty million dollars. In these trials, you were acquitted, found not guilty and not liable. The right? Yes, I think that's really important again in terms of due process.

And I read all a lot when I watched a lot in preparation for this on this, on this point, including, of course, the recently detailed interviews he did, the then wooden and then Allison person of the telegraph. And those are all focused on this topic. And they go in detail where you respond in detail to many of the allegations.

If people are interested in the details, they can listen to those. So based on that, everything I looked at, as I understand you, never prevented anyone from leaving if they wanted to. So in the sexual context, for example.

by block in the door, that right? That's correct.

You always respected the explicit no from people again, the sexual context that that is correct. You've never done anything sexual with an under .

age person, right?

never. And also, as is sometimes done in hollywood, let me ask this, you've never explicit offered to exchange sexual favors for career investment. correct? correct. In terms of bad behaviour, what did you do? What was the worst of IT and how often did you do IT?

I have heard and now quite often that everybody has a Kevin spacey story um and what that tells me is that I hit on a lot of guys.

how often did you cross the line and what does that mean to you? I did a .

lot of horsing around, a lot of things that at the time I thought we're sort of playful, ful and fun and I have learned sense or not and I have had to recognize that I I crossed some boundaries and I did some things that we're wrong and I made some mistakes. And that's in my past. I mean, i've been working so hard over the last seven years to have the conversations I needed to have to listen to people to understand things from a different perspective than the one that I had, and to say, I will never behave that way again for the rest of my life.

Just clarify, I think you're often to push you with the flooding. And then manifest itself in multiple ways. But just make clear, you never prevented anyone from leaving if they wanted to.

You always took the explicit now from people as an answer. No, stop. You took that for the answer.

You've never done anything sexual than under each person, and you've never explicit offered to exchange sexual favours for career advancement. These are some of those of accusations that have been made. And in the court of law, multiple times have been shown not to be true.

But I have had a sexual life, and i've fall in love and i've been so admr admiring of people that I, that I I mean, i'm so romantic. I'm such a romantic person that there's this whole side of me that hasn't been talked about, isn't being discussed. But that's that's who I know, that the person I know it's been very upsetting to hear that some people have said I I mean, I don't have a violent bone of my body, but to hear people describe things as having been very aggressive is incredibly difficult for me. And i'm deeply sorry that I ever offended anyone or heard anyone in any way IT is IT is crushing to me and I have to work very hard to show and to prove that I have learned um I got the memo and I won't never ever ever behave in those ways again from everything i've .

seen in public interactions with you. People love you. Colleagues love you. Coworkers love you. They there is a fluctuation, sly, another word for that is chemistry. There's is a chemistry between the people .

work with and by the way, not to take anything away from my accountability for things I did when I got IT wrong across the line. I pushed some boundaries. I accept all, but I live in an industry in which flotation attraction people meeting in the workspace and ending up marrying each other and having children.

And so IT is IT is, IT is a space in a place where these notions of family, these notions of attraction, these notions of it's always complicated. If you meet someone in the words base and find yourselves attracted to each other, you have to be mindful of that. And you have to be very mindful that you don't ever want anyone to feel that um their job is in jeopardy um or you would punish them in some way if they no longer wanted to be with you. So those are important of things to just acknowledge.

Another complexity to this as as i've seen, is that there's just a huge number of actors that look up to you, a huge number people in the industry that look is old just and love you. I seem just from this documentation, just a lot of people just love being around you, uh, learning from you what IT means to create great theater, a great film, great stories. And so that as the complexity, I wouldn't say it's the power dynamic like a boss employee relationship is a admiration dynamic that is easy to miss and easy to take advantage of. Is that something understand?

yes. And I also understand that there are people who met me and spent a very brave period of time with me, but presumed I was now going to be their mentor and then behaved in a way that I was unaware of, that they were either participating or flooding along or encouraging me without me having any idea that that at the end of the day, they were expecting something. Um so these are about relationships. These are about two people. These are about people making decisions, people making choices. And I I accept my accountability in that, but there are a number of things that i've been accused of that just simply did not happen and and I can't say and I don't think that would be right for me to say, well, I you know everything that everyone had been accused of is true because we've now proved that IT isn't and IT wasn't um but i'm perfectly willing to accept that I had behaviors that were wrong and that I shouldn't have done and I am regretful for I think .

that also speaks to a dark side of fame. The sense I got is that there are some people potential a lot of people, trying to make friends with you in order to get roles, in order to advances their career. So not you using them, but they trying to use you.

what's. That like, how do you know somebody likes you for you for Kevin or likes you for like you? You said you're romantic. You see a person and you like, I like this person .

and they .

seem to like you. How do you know if they like you for you?

Well, to some degree, I would say that I have been able to trust my instincts on that, and that I, most of the time, been right. But obviously, in the last number of years, not just for people who accused me, but just also people in my own industry, you to realize that, oh, I thought we had a friendship. But I guess that was about an interesting and and and not what I thought I was um but luck the you know one should be surprised by that.

I have to also say you sit a little while ago that the world had cancelled me and I have to disagree with you. I have to disagree because for seven years i've been stopped by people sometimes every day, sometimes multiple, multiple times a day. And the conversations that I have with people, the generosity that they share, the kindness that they show and how much they wanna know when i'm getting back to work, tells me that while there may be a very loud minority, there is a quieter majority in .

the industry. Have you been betrayed in life and how you not let that make you cynical?

I think betrayal is a really interesting word.

but I think .

if you're going to be betrayed, IT has to be by those who truly know you. And I can tell you that I have not been betrayed was a beautiful way to .

put IT for the times you cross the line. Do you take responsibility for the wrongs you've done?

yes.

Are you side to the people you may have hurt, actually? yes.

And I have spoken to many .

of them .

privately.

privately, which is where a men should be made.

Were they able to start finding forgiven ness?

absolutely. Some of the most moving conversations that I have had when I was determined to take accountability have been those people have said, thank you so much. and. I think I can forgive you .

now if you got .

to have to talk to the Kevin space of thirty.

forty years ago.

what would you time to change about his ways? how? How would you do IT? What will be your approach would you be nice about? Would you smack him around?

I think if I were to go back that far, I probably would have found a way to um not have been as concerned about my revealing my sexuality and hiding that as long as I did. I think that had a um a lot to do with confusion and a lot to do with mistrust, both my own other people's.

For most of your life, you were not opened with the public about being gay. What is the hardest thing about keeping who you love a secret?

That I didn't find the right moment of celebration to be able to share that there must be .

a thing that ways are you do not be able to fully. Yes, celebrate your love.

You know, ian mclean said after forty, he was forty nine when he came out twenty seven years, he'd been a professional actor being in the closet. And he said he felt IT was like he was living a part of his life, not being truthful, and that he felt that IT affected his work when he did come out because he no longer felt like he had anything to hide. And I absolutely believe that that is what my experience has been and will continue to be. I I am sorry about the way I came out um but I had but even I had already .

had .

the conversation when I was I had already decided to come out and so IT wasn't like, oh I I was forced to come out but IT was something I decided to do and by the way, much against evan advice, I came out in that statement and he wishes that I had .

not done so yeah you made a statement um when the initial acquisition happened, there could be up there is one of the worst social media posts of all time. Into.

it's like .

two for one.

Don't hold back. Come on, really tell me first.

you kind of implicity admitted to doing something bad, which was later shown and proved completely to never have happened.

IT was a lie. No, I I, I basically said that I didn't remember what this person was the anthy rapids claiming from thirty one years before I remember. If, but if that had happened, if this embarrassing moment had happened, then I would know him an apology. That was what I said. And then I said, and while I add IT, I think i'll come out and you know, IT was definitely not the greatest coming .

out party over from the public perception part of the as a horrible way to come out. Yes, we all agree. And then the first part from the public viewpoint, they see guilt in that which also is tragic, because at least that particular accusation is a very dramatic one, is a forty million down lawsuits, big deal. And under each person was shown to be false.

You you're melting two things together. The law didn't happen until twenty, twenty. And then I didn't get to court until twenty two. We're back in twenty seventeen when he was just an accusation he made buzzed magazine um look, I was back into a corner when someone says you were so drunk, you won't remember this thing happened.

What's your first instinct? Is your first instance to say this person's a liar, or is your first instinct to go what I was, what, thirty one years at a party, I only remember throwing. Obviously, a lot of investigation happened after that in which we were unable to prove in that in the court case that IT had never occurred. But at the moment, I was sort of being so I couldn't push back. I you have to be kind, you can't I think you know even to me now none of that sounds right, but I don't know that I could have said anything that would have been satish tory to anybody OK.

There is almost convincing explanation for the worst social first time.

almost accept IT. I'm really surprised. I guess you haven't read a lot of media post because I can't believe .

that the act of one is beautiful ly bad. How about the social? As you mentioned, the leam nisson and sharing stone came out and supportive. You recently speaking .

to your .

character. A lot of people who know you and some of them I know who've worked with you privately show support for you, but are afraid to speak up publicly. Would you make a that I need to me persons? This just makes me sad because IT perhaps as the nature of the industry .

that it's difficult to do that.

But I just wish to be a bit more courage in the world.

I don't think it's about the industry. I think it's about our time and is the time that were in. And people are very afraid.

just afraid, just a general if you're literally .

afraid that um they're going to get cancelled if they stand up for someone who has been. And I think it's I mean, you know, we've seen this many times in history, this is not the first time it's happened.

So you're said your darkest moment in twenty seventeen when all of this one down, one of the things that happened is you were no longer on the hostel cards for the last season. Let's go the beginning of that show, one of the greatest TV series of all time, a dark, fascinating character in Frank underwood, a root is cunning, board line, evil politician.

What are some interesting aspects to the process you went through becoming Frank underwood? Maybe Richard the third, there's a lot of elements there in your performance that may be inspired red, that character. Well.

I give you, I give you one very interesting specific。 Education that I got in doing Richard the third and closing that show that ban in march of twenty twelve and two months later started shooting outside card. There is something called directly.

In shakespeare, um you have hamlets talks to the world. But when shakes, wrote Richard the third IT was the first time he created something called direct address, which is the character looks directly at each person close by IT is a different kind of a sharing. Then, when a characters doing a monologue opening of any 4。 And while there are some .

people who believe .

that direct dress was invented in fair pear IT wasn't IT was shakespeare who invested. So I had just had this experience every night in theatres all over the world seeing how people reacted to becoming a coin spirit or because that's what is about. And what I tried to do and what the future really helped me with in those beginning days. Was how to look in that camera .

and imagine .

I was talking to my best friend.

Because you're sharing the secret of the darkness of hole's game is played with .

that best friend. Yeah and there were many times when I suppose the right, I thought I was crazy where I would see a script and I would see like this moment where this direct dress would happen, say, all this stuff. And I go when we do a read through of the script.

I O, I don't think I need to say any of that like very much. Well, the audience knows all of that. All I have to do is, look, they know exactly what's going on.

I don't need to say a thing. So I was often cutting dialogue um because I just wasn't needed because that relationship between that i've learned that i'd experience doing rich. The third.

What's so extraordinary where I literally watched people, they were like, I am in on the thing and this is so awesome. And then suddenly, when he killed the kids, he killed those kids in the tower. Oh, maybe it's not.

And you literally would watch them start to reverse their having had such a great time with rich of the third in the first of three eggs. I thought this is gonna en in this show if this um intimate. Can actually land.

And I think just think there were some brilliant writing. And we always attempted to do IT in one tech. No matter how long something was, we would try to do IT in one.

Take the direct dresses. So there is never a cut. When we went on on locations, we started to then find ways to cut and make IT slightly broader. But that because .

you're doing a bunch of with both Richard third from country, what I want you dark born evil things and then I guess the ideas, you're going to be losing the audience and I go with the addresses .

that the remarkable thing is against their instincts, and they're Better sense of what they shouldn't, should not do. They still rally around from france, counter wood.

And I saw, even with the documentary, the gamers of that, and we will reach out the third. I mean, you reducing the audience, like there is such a chemistry between you.

the audience, on stage in that production. That's absolutely true. Also, Richard is one of the weird, weird, I mean, by weird.

Was an early play of shapes, and he's basically never off stage. I mean, I remember when we did the first run through, I had no idea what the next scene was. Every time I came hostage, I no idea what was next.

They literally had to drag me from one place to see. Now it's the same with hasty. Now it's this.

But I now understand these wonderful stories that you can read in in old books about shakespeare time that actors grab shakespeare around the cuff and punched him and threw up against all. So you ever write a part like this, again, i'm going to kill you. And that's why in later place, he started to have a paget happened, and then a wedding happened.

And the main character was off stage resting because the actor said, you can't do this to us. There's no breaks. And it's true, this very few breaks in Richard the third, you're on stage most of the time.

The comedie gaspee of Richard the third and Frank wooden is is that a component that helps spring out the full complexity of the the darkness?

That is Frank underwood. I certainly, can I take credit for shakespeare having written something that is funny, or bowl man and his team to written something that is funny is fundamentally funny. IT just depends on how on how I interpret IT on on.

You know, there are that's one of the great things that why we love. You know, in a year's time, we can see five different hamlets. We can see four, Richard the third.

We can see two, rich, the seconds. That's part of the thrill that we don't own these parts. We borrow them and we interpret them. And what E M, A elon might do with a role could be completely different from what I might do because of the way we perceive IT. And also very often in terms of going for humor is very often a director will say, why don't you say that with a bit of irony? You try that with a bit of.

and this often like that, like a rice smile, a line that jumps to me, you talk about in the early, maybe first episode. Even I love that woman more than sharks love blood. I just, and you, I mean, I guess there's a lot of ways to read that line. But the way you read IT had both humor and legitimate affection and all the ambition and narcisso, all of that mixed up together.

I also think that one should just acknowledge that where he was from there is something that happens when you do an accent. I in, in fact, sometimes the one I would say to bow or or one of the other writers. This is really good, and I love the idea, but IT rythmically doesn't help.

I need, I need at least two more words to rithmetic make this work in his accent because IT just doesn't scan and that's not iambic pandemic. I am not talking about that. There is that as well in shakesperean. But there were sometimes when it's too many lines, it's not enough lines in order for me to make this work for the way he speaks, the way he sounds and what that accent does to emphasis how much .

is that character in terms of the musical of the way speaks? Is bill not .

really at all? I mean, clinton, in a look, bill clinton, he had a wave tag in, you know that he was very slow and he felt your pain, you know but Frank, and what was deeper, more direct um and less poetic uh in the way that that clinton would talk, i'll tell you this clint story that you like. So we decide to do a performance of the ice man come up for the democratic party on broadway.

And the president is gonna going to see this foreign half hour play. And we're going to do this event afterworld. And a couple of weeks before we're going to do this event, someone of the White house calls and says, i'm listen.

It's very unusual to get the president for like six and half hours. So we're suggesting that the president can and see the first act. And then he goes.

and I knew what was .

happening. Now, first of all, couldn't knows this play. He knows .

what this .

place about. And I you know as gently as I could said, well, if president is thinking of leaving IT in a mission that i'm afraid we're going to have to cancel the event. There's just no way that so only way then where no, it's fine, is right now I know what was happening.

What was happening was that someone had read the play and they were quite concerned. And I say why? Because the place is about this character, that portrait name, hickey. And in the course of the play, as things get more and more revealed, you realize that this man that i'm playing has benevolently. He's cheating on his wife quite a lot.

And by the end of the play, he is arrested and taken off because he ended up ending his wife's life, because he forgave him too much and he couldn't live with IT. So now imagine this, there's two thousand people at the burka theatre watching president clinton watching this play. At the end of the night, we take our curtain call, they bring out the presidential podium. Bill clinton stands up there and he says. Well, I suppose we should all thank Kevin and this extraordinary company actors for giving .

us all .

way too much to think about. The audience fell over and laughter, and then he gave a great speech, and I thought that was pretty way to handle that.

In that way, human Franka would share like a karize ma. The certain president just have politicians, they just have this crime can stop listening to them. Someone is the accent, but someone is some other magical thing.

When I what's .

starting .

to do research um I wanted to meet with the whip, keep a carthy .

and he wouldn't .

meet with me till I called his office back and said, tell him i'm playing a democrat, not a republic. And then he and he was helpful. He took me to with meetings.

Politicians, so you work with David venture that he he was the execute producer, but he also directed the the first two episodes there. High level will was like working with him again. In which ways do you think he helped guide you in the show to become the great other?

Was I I give him A A huge amount of the credit and not just for what he established, but the fact that every director .

after stayed .

within that world. I think that's why the series had a very consistent feeling to IT. I was like watching a very long movie. The style where the camera went, what I did, what I didn't do, how we use this, how we use that, how we didn't do this.

There were, there were things that he laid the foundation for that we managed to maintain pretty much until the William left to show they got rid of future. And I was sort of the last man standing in terms of fighting again. Netflix had never had any creative control at all.

We had complete creative control. But over the time, they started to get themselves involved because, look, this is what happens to network. You know, theyd never made a television show before ever. And then four years later that they were the best. And so, you know, then you're going to get suggestions about casting and about writing and about whose music and scenes. And so there, there is a considerable amount, a push back that I had to do when they started to get involved in ways that I thought was affecting the quality of the show.

What are those battles like? Like, I heard that there is battle. The exec, like you mentioned on about your name, not being on the billing for seven, I heard the first battles about the ending of seven, which was really well, pretty dark.

So what's that battle? Like how often is that happened? How do you win the battle? Because IT feels like there's .

a line where .

the networks or the the exact are really afraid of crossing that line into this strange, uncomfortable place. And then the director, great directors and great actors kind of flat with that line.

You can happen in different ways. And then I remember one, uh, argument we had was we had specifically shot a scene so that there will be no score in that scene, so that there was no music. IT was just two people talking.

And then we end up seeing a cut where they've decided to put music in. And IT is against everything that seems supposed to be about. And you have to go and say, guys, this was intentional. We did not want score and now you've had to score because what you think is too quiet.

You think in our audience can listen to two people talk for two and half minutes with this show is proved anything it's proved that people have patients and they are willing to watch an entire season over a weekend. Um so there are those kind of um our arguments that can happen. Um you know there's different arguments on different levels sometimes have to do with, I mean, look, go back to the godfather.

Theyd wanted a fire patino because they didn't see anything happening. They saw nothing happening, so they wanted to fire but geno and then finally, couple of thought, i'll shoot seen where he kills the police commissioner and and we'll do that scene now and that was the first seen where they went. Yeah, actually do something going on there. So peco kept the role. You think .

that godfathers .

from pecci is like the PCI o we now was born? Or is that more like there's a character that really over the top and a woman? This explains, I suppose .

yeah course look, I think that we can't forget that patch ino is also an animal of the theatre. Know he does a lot of place and he started off doing place. And you know movies where know pani need a park was this first um and yeah I think there is a that period of time when he was doing some incredible parts, credible movies.

When I did a series called wise guy, I got cast on a thursday and I flew up to vancouver on a saturday. I started shooting on monday and all I had time to do was watch the godfather and super co. And then I went to work.

Would you say? Ridiculous question. Grandfather, greatest st. Film of all time.

Well, country has certainly, certainly, yes, yes. But I also look like i'm allowed to change my opinion. I can next week, say, its loans of the ababa, or a week after that I can say solvents travels. I mean, that's the wonderful thing about movies and particularly great movies is when you see them again, it's like saying that for the first time yeah and you pick up things that you didn't see the last time .

and for that day you fall in love with that movie. You might even say, uh to a friend that that is the greatest movie of all time.

So I think it's it's the degree with which directors are daring. I mean, kubrick decided .

to cast one .

actor to play three major roles in doctor strange law. I mean, who who has the balls to do that today?

I was going to mention we were talking about seven, that just if if if you're looking at the greatest performances, portraits of murderer, so obviously, like I mention hand elector silence of the lambs that's up there. Seven to me, like competing for first place with sounds of lambs. But then there is a different one with kubrick and jack nicolson, right? With china, with china.

And there's I supposed to a who's always been a murder. He is a person like an american beauty who becomes that, whose descends into madness. I I read also the detecting and in provides her that seen, I believe that that's a very different performance than yours. And seven, what do you make of that performance?

Nickell son's always been such an incredible actor because he has absolutely no shame about being demonstrative. And over the top, they also has no problem can playing characters who were deeply flawed and he interested in that. I was pretty good. Nicklas and story, though nobody, nobody knows.

You also have a pretty good next question. What's the story?

stories? M, story was told me by a sound man. Dennis mayland was a great, great, great guy. He said he was very excited because he he got on pits. His honour, which was jack nal and Angeles ston directed john houston.

He said, I was so excised my first day on the movie, and I get to have told a going to mister nicholson's a trailer and might come up for the first scene. So I knock on the trailer door and your yes and come on in and I come inside. Mister nicholson is changing out of his regular clothes and he's putting going to put on his costume and so i'm setting up the mike and i'm getting ready in I said mr.

nicholson. I just one of the tell him i'm extremely excited to be working with you again. It's it's a great pleasure.

And jakes, did we work together before? He says, yes, yes, we we did. What what film did we do together? What we did, missouri breaks nicholson and goes, oh my god, mazarine bricks.

Jesus Christ, we are of our minds on that film. Holy ship. God, so much drugs going on, we were stoned out our minds. Holy shit. Just then he folds the pants that he's just taken off over his ARM and neth the cook drops out .

on the fort.

Dennis looks at IT .

nicholle .

son looks at IT jakes had .

more in these .

pants since missouri place.

May I love that guy unapologetically himself?

Oh yeah.

you're impression of him like, was is just great.

Well, that was. That was for mike nickles.

Oh yeah, he had a big impact in your country. Really important about him. Like, good. What role did he .

playing if I think IT was? Yeah, was one thousand hundred and eighty four. I went into addition for the national tour of a play called the real thing, which jeremy irons in glen clothes were doing on broadway that mister nichols had directed.

I went into read for this character, brody, who is a Scottish character, and I did the audition. And magna les comes down the eye of the theatre and he asking me questions about where you go to school and what you've been doing. And I just come back from, during a bunch of years, regional theatre in different theatres that was in new york, an meeting.

Mike nichols was just incredible. So mister nickles went, have you have you seen the other play that I directed up, the block called hurly burly? And I said, no, I haven't.

He says, why not? I said, I can't afford a broadway ticket. He said, we can arrange that. I'd like you to go see that play. And then i'd like IT coming next week. In addition for that, I was like, okay, so I went to see her liberty, William hurt harvey. I tell Chris walton, canis burden cinthio, Jerry stiller.

and I watched this play.

play David replay about hollywood, this craze. I mean, bill herd was like, unbelievable. I was extraordinary.

Chris, walk at this cause. So this hardly, I tell, walk and came in later. Have to tell playing this part.

And I come in in my addition for IT. Nickell says, I want you to a understudy, harvey. I tell on which you understudy, fill and like fill.

I mean, how can tell us like in his four days, he looks like beat that. Shut out everybody on stage. I'm just like twenty four .

year old and .

nickel said to stall about attitude, if you believe you can beat the shit on ever Better other stage, the audience will do OK. So I then started to learn fill and the way IT works, when you're in understudy, unless you're in name, they don't only arrears on the stage, you just rehearsal in a rehearsal room.

But I used to sneak onto the stage and rehearsal and try to figure what the props were any anyway, one day I get a call you're going on today is fill. So I went on, nichols is told by Peter Lawrence, is the stage manager spaces gone on, his fills and nicklas comes down and watches. The second act comes back stage.

He says, that was really good. How soon could you learn Mickey? Mickey was the role that round silver was playing, the a Chris walking also, like I said, I don't I don't know.

I may maybe a couple of weeks he could learn, make you too. So I learned Mickey. And then one day i'm told you're going on.

The more night is Mickey nicklas comes seize. The second act comes back stage. He says, that was really good.

I mean, that was really funny. How soon could you learn, eddy? And so I became like the pinch ter on hurly burley.

I learned to all the male parts, including jury's, stiller, or I never want on the jury still as part. And then I left the play. And I guess about two months later, I get this phone call from mag.

nickles. He is like Kevin hour, and I like a fine. what? What can I do for? He says, well, i'm going to make a film this summer with Mandy and maroon.

There's a role i'd like you to come in in and an audition for so I went in, auditioned, cast me as this mugger on a subway. Then there's this whole appealed that happens because he then doesn't continue with many pattin. Uh, man, he leaves the movie and he asked technicals to come in and replace maneater MPA.

So now I had no scenes with him but I mean a movie with jack nicol and moral trip in my first scene in this movie, which I shot on my birthday to nine twenty six of eighty five um I got to wink at male streep in the scene and I was so nervous I I literally couldn't wink nickles had to like called me down and help me wink um but that became my first my very first film um and he was incredible and he let me come and watch when they were shooting since I wasn't in um and I remember ending up one day in the makeup trailer on the same day we were working jack and me we had no seen together but I remember him coming in and they put him down in the chair and they put cucumber, frozen cucumbers on his eyes and did his neck and then they raised him up and did his face then I remember nicholson went like this, looked in the mir and I went. Another day, another fifty thousand dollars, and walked out the trailer. What was .

Christ for walking like? So he's he's a theater guy too.

Oh yeah, he started out the course boy dancer.

Well, I can see that. Yes, I don't .

walk at a long time. And I did a senate alive where I did a, we did these star wars auditions. I did Chris walking is as hunt so good, and I never forget this. I was in last angles about two weeks after, and I was at shat, told my mother was some party happening, shat, mama. And I saw Chris, well, can comment out of under the balcony.

And I was like, walk.

and he walked up to anyone. Kevin, I saw you a little sketch. IT was funny, haha.

IT was a really good, sketchy and that guy that there are certain people that are truly unique and apologetic continue being that without the whole career, the way they talk, the music ality of how they talk, how they are their way of being. He's that and and it's somehow words watch .

yeah and he works in .

so many different context. He plays like a moster in true romance and genius that's genius. Be anything. He be soft. He could be a bad as of IT and he's always Christ walking but somehow worked for all the different characters. So I guess we are talking about house cars like two hours ago before we took attention upon attention.

But there's a moment in episode one where president Walker broke his promise to drink underwood that he'd make a sector state. Was this when the monster in Frank was born? Or was the monster was there the sort of for you looking at that character? Was there an idealistic cho tion to him, that there's loyalty and that broken? Or did he always know that there is this, this whole world is about manipulation and do anything to get power?

Well, I mean, IT might have been the first moment an audience saw him be betrayed, but IT certainly was not the first betrayal he'd experienced. And once you start to get to know him and learn about his life, and learn about his father, and learn about his, you know, friends, and learn about their relationship, and learn what he was like, even as a cadette, I think you start to realize that this is a man who has. Very strong beliefs about loyalty. And so IT wasn't the first IT was just the first moment that in terms of the storyline is being built night takes king was the name of our production .

company yeah what do you think motivated him at that moment? And throughout the show? Was that all about power and also legacy? Or was there some small part of the eath at all where he wanted to actually do good in the world?

No, I I think power is a, is a. After thought, what he loved more than anything was being able to predict how human beings would react. He was a behavioral psychologist, and he could know, like he was seventeen, moves ahead in a chess game.

He could know if he did this at this moment, but eventually this would happen. He was able to be predictive and was usually right. He knew just how far he needed to push someone to get them to do what he needed them to do in order to make the next step work.

You played a bunch of evil characters.

Well, you call them evil, but you don't. But but might the reason I say that I don't mean to be snarky about about the reason I say that way is because I never judge the people .

I play and the people .

that I have played or that any actor has played, don't necessarily view themselves as this label is easy to say, but that's not the way I can think. I cannot judge character. I play and then play them well.

I have to be free of judgment. I have to just play them and let the cards drop where they, where they may and let an audience judge mean the fact that you use that works perfectly fine. That's your you but it's like people asking me, you know was I really from k pex or not? You know, it's entirely depends on you're perspective.

Do roles like that, like seven, like Frank hana wood, like a lesson from american beauty? Do they change you psychologically as a person? So walking around in the skin of these characters, these complex characters with a very different moral systems.

嗯。 I absolutely believe .

that wandering around .

in someone else's ideas and someone else is cloth, and someone else is shoes. Teaches you enormous empathy, and that goes to the heart of not judging. And I have found that I have been so moved by, I mean, look, let's yes, you you've identified the darker of characters.

But I put on darrow three times. I've played a plate of national, and i've done movies like greek out. I've done films like the ref. I've done films that in which there are that is that doesn't exist in any of those characters, that good qualities paid forward. And so IT is incredible .

to be able .

to embrace those things that I admire and that are are like me, and those things that I don't admire and aren't like me. But I have to put them on an equal footing and say, I have to just play them as best I can and not. Decide to wheel judgment over them without .

judged without judgment. In gulag copal ago, Alexander soldier eton famously writes about the line between good and evil that IT runs to the heart of every man. So the the full .

paragraph .

there when he talks about the line during the life of any heart, this line keeps changing place. Sometimes, that is, squeeze one way by ubn evil. And sometimes it's shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish.

One in the same human being is at various ages, on the various circumstances, are totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to saint hood, but his name doesn't change that name. We describe the whole lot, good and evil.

What do you think about this? Note that we're all capable of good and evil. And throughout life, that line moves and shifts throughout the day, throughout.

Every hour. yeah. I mean, one of the things that i've been focused on, very simply, it's the idea that every day is an opportunity.

Is an opportunity. to. Make Better decisions to learn and to grow.

Um and I also think that. Look at. I grew up not knowing if my parents loved me. Particularly my father. I, I never had a sense that I was loved and that stayed with me in my whole life. And .

when I think .

back at who my father was and more simply, who he became. IT was a gradual and slow and sad development. When i've gone back and now i've looked at dies, my father kept, and albums he kept, particularly when he was a medic in the U.

S. Army, served our country with distinction when the war was over, and they went to germany. The things my father said, the things that he wrote, the things that he believed were his patriotic, is any american soldier who had ever served.

But then he came back to america, and he had a dream of being a journalist. Or his big hope was that he was going to be the great american novelist. He want to be a creative novice. And so he SAT in his office, and he wrote for forty five years .

and never published .

anything. And somewhere along the way, in order to make money, he became what they call a technical procedure writer, which the best way to described that is that if you built the f sixteen aircraft, my father would have written the man, you want to tell you how to do IT. I mean, as boring, as technical, as tedious as you can imagine.

And so somewhere in the sixties and into the seventies, my father fell in with groups of people and individuals, pretend intellectuals, who started to give him reasons why he was not successful as a White arian man in the united states. And over time my father became a White supreme ist. And I cannot tell you the amount of times as a Young boy that my father would sit me down and left me four hours and hours and hours about his fucked up ideas of america, of prejudice, of White supremacy.

Thank god for my sister, who said, don't listen to a thing. He says he's out of his mind. And even though I was Young, I knew everything he was saying was against people. And I I loved people. I had so many wonderful friends, my best friend mike, still my close friend of this day.

I was afraid to bring him to my house because I was afraid that my father would find out he was jewish, or that my father would leave his office door open and someone would see his, not see flag or his pictures of his ler, or not see books or what you might say. so. When I found theater, and he is grade and debate club and quire and festivals and plays, and everything I could do to participate in that wouldn't make me have to come back home, I did.

and. I've had to reconcile who he became because the gap between that man who was in the U. S.

Army as a metic and the man he became. I could never fill that gap, but. I forgiven him.

But then at the same time, I ve had to look at my mother and say, SHE made excuses for him, though he just needs to give IT off his chest. He doesn't matter, just let him say. So while on the outside, I would say only my mother loved me, but SHE didn't .

protect me.

So was the. Was all the stuff that he expressed in all of the attention and all the love that I felt was that because I became successful and I was able to fulfill an emptiness that he had lived with her whole life with him. I don't know, but I i've had to ask myself those questions over these last years. To try to reconcile that for myself .

and the thing you wanted from them and for them is let's hate and more love. Does your dad said he he loves .

you and I don't have any memory of that. I was in a program and I they were showing us. so.

An experiment that they are done with psychologists and mothers and fathers and their children. The children are running where between six months in a year, sitting in a little trip. And the exercise was this, parents are playing with the baby right there, toys a baby like.

And then the psychologists to say, stop. And the parent would go like this. And you would then watch for the next two and a half, three minutes, this child trying to get their parents .

attention in .

any possible way. And I remember when I was sitting in this theatre watching this. I saw myself, that was me screaming and reaching out and trying to get my parents attention. That was me and that was not something i'd i'd ever remembered before. But I I knew that what that baby was going through.

Is there some moments of a politics and me be the private sector .

that are .

capture by by house cards, like how how true the life do you think that is from everything you've seen about politics, from everything you've en about the politicians of this particular .

elections? I heard so many different reactions from politicians about his cards. Some would say, or not like that at all, and the others would say it's closer to the truth than anyone wants to admit. And I think I fall down on the side of that idea.

I have to interview some world leaders.

some big politicians.

In your understanding of trying to become Frank wood, what a device would you give an interviewer for? How to get you to say anything that's at all honest?

Well, in france case, all you have to do is tell him to look into the camera and i'll tell we, war great. Unfortunately.

we will get that look into the the mind of a person the way we do with drink. Underwood in real life, sadly.

Well, but you could say to somebody you like the serious house card. No, i'd love for you to just look into the camera, tell us what's really going on, what you really feel about blab a bar that's .

a good technique. I'll try. That was a landscape fooding. Um what do you hope your legacy as an actor is and and as a human being?

People ask me now what your favourite performance you've ever given and my answer is I haven't given IT yet. So um there's a lot more than I want to be chAllenged by, be inspired by. There's a lot that I don't know.

There's a lot I have to learn. um. And that is a very exciting place to feel that.

I mean. No, it's been interesting because we're going back. We're talking and you know, it's it's nice to go back every now then. But I focused on on what's next.

Do you hope the world forgives you?

People got a church every week to be forgiven. And I believe that forgiveness, and I believe that redemption are beautiful things. I mean, look, don't forget, I live in an industry in which there is a tremendous amount of conversation about redemption from a lot of people who are very serious people in very serious positions, who who believe in IT.

Mean, that guy finally got out of prison. He was wrongly accused that guy who served his time and got out of prison. We see so many people saying, let's find a path for that person.

Let's help that person rejoin society. But there is an odd situation. If you're in the entertainment industry, you're not offered that kind of a path. And I hope .

that the fear that .

people are experiencing will eventually subside and common sense will get back to the table.

If IT does, do you think you have another Oscar worthy performance in you?

Listen, if I would pissed off jack lemon again for me to win a third time, I absolutely think so. A.

but you have to mention him again. You know, earnest hemingway once said that the world is a fine place worth fighting for, and I agree with him on both counts. Kevin, take you so much. thanks.

Thank you. Thanks for listening to .

this conversation with Kevin spacey. To support this podcasts, please check out sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you some words for moral streep.

Acting is not about being someone different. It's finding the similarity in what is apparently different and then finding myself in there. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.