Kevin Spacey was born as Kevin Spacey Fowler on July 26th 1959 in South Orange, New Jersey to Thomas and Kathleen Fowler. Strange as it may seem, Kevin Spacey has always kept the details of his private life closely guarded. He explained this in a 1998 interview with the London Evening Standard. "It's not that I want to create some bullshit mystique by maintaining a silence about my personal life, it is just that 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." However, there are some biographical facts available.
Kevin Spacey Fowler was the youngest of the three children that his Parents gave birth to. His Mother was a personal secretary, and his father was a technical writer. His father had several different job prospects which led his family all over the country. They eventually settled in Southern California, and little Kevin turned into a little hellian.
After setting his sister's treehouse on fire one day, Kevin Spacey was shipped off to the Northridge Military Academy. A few months after he arrived there, he was thrown out for pinging one of his classmates in the head with a tire. Spacey then moved on to the San Fernando Valley, and attended Chatsworth High School. While there, he was able to channel his dramatic tendencies into a successful amateur acting career.
Spacey claims that his interest in acting started at a very young age when he used to sneak downstairs to watch the late show on TV. When he was in high school, Spacey would cut class with his friends to go watch movies at the NuArt theater. As an adolescent, Spacey worked up some celebrity impersonations to try out at amateur comedy clubs.
He started out at Los Angeles Valley College, but was later convinced by classmate Val Kilmer to join the drama program at Julliard. Because he was so anxious to work, Spacey quit Julliard after only 2 years and signed up with the New York Shakespeare Festival. In 1981, Spacey had his first successful stage appearance in "Henry VI".
In 1986, he had the chance to work with his idol and future mentor Jack Lemmon, on a production of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night". He went on to star in movies such as Working Girl in 1988, Iron Will in 1994, A Time to Kill in 1996, The Negotiator in 1998, and recently Beyond the Sea, which comes out later this year.
In the movie "A Time to Kill", Kevin Spacey played the part of District Attorney Rufus Buckley. He was defending the two boys that had raped Carl Lee Haily's (Samuel L. Jackson) daughter. Carl Lee had decided to take matters into his own hands, and kill the two boys out of fear of them getting off. Rufus Buckley squared off against Jake Tyler Brigance, portrayed by Matthew McConaughey. Buckley and Brigance go head to head throughout the movie, and make it one of the best courtroom drama's I have ever seen!
