kevin spacey

It's difficult to come up with much of a biography on Kevin Spacey, and that's just the way he likes it. Spacey insists that it isn't because he wants to create some kind of a mystique around himself - it's just that, as he sees it, "The less you know about me, the easier it is to convince you that I am that character on screen. It allows an audience to come into a movie theatre and believe I am that person."

But it's impossible to keep yourself a complete mystery, especially these days. Spacey was born in South Orange, New Jersey, and grew up in California, where he became a bit of a brat; after setting his sister's treehouse on fire he was shipped off to military school. He didn't last very long there, either, kicked out for bouncing a tire off of a classmate's head. It was in high school that Spacey would discover a love of acting, starring alongside Mare Winningham in his senior production of "The Sound of Music." He would often skip class with his friends to attend shows downtown, and began to appear onstage at comedy clubs for a time.

On the advice of Val Kilmer, another friend, he enrolled in the drama program at Juilliard, but was so excited to start working that he left after two years to appear with the New York Shakespeare Festival. This eventually led to several Broadway appearances as well. Spacey never really left the theatre - he won a Tony in 1991 for his role in Neil Simon's "Lost in Yonkers" - but he was becoming more and more interested in film. Though he started out slowly, Spacey would eventually appear in films that would make him a household name, such as "Glengarry Glen Ross" in 1992, "The Usual Suspects" in 1995, and "Se7en" alongside Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt. It was his role as Lester Burnham in "American Beauty" alongside Annette Bening, however, that would really skyrocket him to fame, and win him a Best Actor Oscar to boot.

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