Kevin Spacey Biography

Kevin Spacey’s Oscar-winning performance as a disaffected suburban husband in American Beauty made his reputation on the movie screen, and his turn as politico Frank Underwood in TV’s House of Cards cemented his place as versatile actor and big star. But in 2017, allegations of sexual harassment derailed his career.

Kevin Spacey has won two Academy Awards; his first came for playing wily con artist ‘Verbal’ Kint in the gangster mystery The Usual Suspects (1995, with Benicio Del Toro). Handsome but not movie-star hunky, Spacey became known for his versatility and his serious theatrical skills: he won a 1991 Tony for Neil Simon’s Lost In Yonkers and from 2003-15 he served as the artistic director of London’s venerable Old Vic Theater.

His other film roles include: Hollywood-happy detective Jack Vincennes in 1997’s L.A. Confidential (with Kim Basinger); the nasty serial killer John Doe in Seven (1995, with Brad Pitt); a confounding mental patient in K-Pax (2001, with Jeff Bridges; a death row inmate (with a conscience) in The Life of David Gale (2003); as Lex Luthor in Superman Returns (2006, starring Brandon Routh); and as Jack Abramoff in Casino Jack (2010).

In 2017, the website Buzzfeed published allegations that Kevin Spacey had made a sexual advance toward actor Anthony Rapp in 1986, when Rapp was 14. Several other men came forward to say that Spacey had made inappropriate advances toward them over the years. (The allegations came shortly after similar claims had been made by female actresses about producer Harvey Weinstein.) Netflix ended production of House of Cards, Spacey’s agent and publicist dropped him as clients, and Sony Pictures decided to reshoot Spacey’s scenes in a finished movie, All The Money In the World, replacing him with Christopher Plummer.