The ‘bleepable’ Kevin Spacey
The design on his hoodie refers to the presidential campaign of his “House of Cards” character Frank Underwood. RUBEN V. NEPALES
LOS ANGELES—Kevin Spacey, who was bleeped while accepting his best actor in a TV series-drama award for “House of Cards” in the recent Golden Globe Awards, is also “bleepable” in person, especially during interviews.
In our earlier chat, for example, when Kevin was asked if he was like his scheming politician character Francis “Frank” Underwood, who would do anything to further his career, he answered without hesitation, “If any actor doesn’t tell you that he has connived to get through, (he has,) abso-f—ing-lutely. Absolutely! I have done things, in order to try to get into an audition, to try to meet somebody. Yeah, absolutely, you connive, cajole, lots of stuff. I didn’t f— my way to the middle—that’s the one thing that I didn’t do.”
Kevin wore a gray hoodie that said, “Underwood 2016,” a reference to his character and the coming presidential election. “I thought it would bring a smile to your face this morning,” the actor said in this talk at The London NYC Hotel.
In his memorable Golden Globe remarks, Kevin, invoking Underwood’s drive to exact revenge on folks who betray him, quipped, “This is just the beginning of my revenge. This is the eighth time I’ve been nominated. I cannot believe I f—ing won.”
A tribute
But Kevin’s speech was not all about bleepable words. He paid tribute to the late filmmaker Stanley Kramer, whose credits include “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” “The Secret of Santa Vittoria” and “Ship of Fools.” He recalled telling the director, “Your films will stand the test of time and will influence filmmakers for all time.”
Kevin Spacey: “I cannot believe I f—ing won.” PHOTO courtesy of HFPA
He added, “And I didn’t know if he really retained what I said or not. Sometimes he did, sometimes he didn’t. But as I stood up to leave, he grabbed my hand—and he said as clear to me as anything he ever said, ‘Thank you so much for saying that; that means so much to me. I just wish my films could have been better.’”
Back to our earlier conversation, Kevin stressed that at the end of the day, he doesn’t bring home his Machiavellian character. “No, I am not somebody who lives with the characters that I play,” he said. “If I did, can you imagine how f—ed-up I would be? When I hang up the costume at the end of the night, the character stays with it (costume). That’s always been the case with me. It’s pretend. I get paid to pretend.”
And no, Kevin has no political aspirations in real life. “It would be a very bad idea to have me in politics. I would probably kill everybody.”
On Frank’s dynamic with his wife Claire, played with equal aplomb by Robin Wright, a duo described by The Wall Street Journal’s Nancy DeWolf Smith as “a power couple with the same malignant chemistry as pairs of serial killers, where each needs the other in order to become lethal,” Kevin said, “What makes some of the great plays, some of the great duos, some of the great clashes of characters is because you have two forces of nature that are either in connection or in conflict.
“Whatever is going on, there’s an electricity when that happens. It’s not necessarily so much about who is going to win. It’s about what will happen in the event of this conflict—these two systems of electricity that will touch, what will happen. Will something extraordinary grow or will it wreak havoc? It’s a very interesting and dramatic experience.”
Last May, Kevin became the subject of a spoof campaign to be Egypt’s next president. The mock presidential campaign for el-Spacey, a play on the name of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the actual candidate, spread like wildfire on social media. “I heard I am the president of Egypt,” Kevin cracked.
Kevin jokingly took the credit for his popular campaign on Twitter and Facebook. “I think it was me. I don’t think it was Underwood. I actually won myself.”
With a grin, he added, “There are a lot of things that happen online that are certainly worth a smile. But one shouldn’t take them seriously.”
Female president
As for the United States where Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to make a campaign for the presidency, Kevin replied, “I don’t know how to answer that in any other way than to say yes, I think the country is ready for a woman to be president. We may well get one.”
Kevin can’t be faulted in his choice of varied roles, from “American Beauty,” “The Usual Suspects” to “House of Cards.” “I have tried in my career to avoid the square, boring parts,” he remarked. “That is true.”
The actor doesn’t mind if he will be best remembered for his Frank Underwood character despite his wide array of roles in theater, television and film over the years. “Why would that worry me?” Kevin asked aloud. “It’s an extraordinary character, incredibly written. I am lucky to have the directors that we had. If this is the only thing that anyone remembers that I have done, I will be fine with that.”
(E-mail the columnist at [email protected]. Follow him at https://twitter.com/nepalesruben.)
