The Return (?) of Kevin Spacey

Kevin Spacey is a convincing liar. Is that what people think of all actors? Maybe. I suppose most people believe that actors lie for a living. I prefer to think that we find the truth for a living, but that’s because I’m both pretentious and an actor, which is, itself, almost assuredly redundant. Spacey also has a whiff of pretension about him, although in his case, it’s earned. He’s not only one of the most accomplished and gifted actors of his generation, he’s almost deeply knowledgeable about his craft and its history. He’s also a liar.

The accusations around Spacey are more voluminous than most Americans are likely aware. The most notorious was made by the actor Anthony Rapp, who asserted that Spacey sexually assaulted him in 1986, when Rapp was 14 and Spacey 26. Rapp sued Spacey for forty million dollars; at trial, Spacey was fully acquitted of all charges.

Last year, he was acquitted of an additional nine charges brought in the UK by several different men. The Hollywood Reporter writes: “Spacey had pleaded not guilty to nine charges from four different men that escalated from unwanted touching to aggressive fondling to, in one instance, allegedly performing oral sex on an unconscious aspiring actor whom Spacey had invited to his flat.” 

Just last month, a documentary about the actor, entitled Spacey Unmasked, leveled accusations against the actor from ten additional men. The Washington Post, writing about the new documentary, adds this bizarre tidbit: “It suggests Spacey’s alleged behavior may have been rooted in a difficult childhood with an abusive, Nazi-supporting father.”

Ok.

To be clear, I don’t know Spacey, but I’d heard rumors of his proclivities for years, dating back to my college days at NYU in the 80’s. He was famous for hitting on young men, men I knew, and equally famous for denying his homosexuality. A 1997 Esquire cover story entitled “Kevin Spacey Has a Secret” titillated readers with an “is he/isn’t he” approach to the actor’s sexuality.

Would you trust this man?

The article, by Tom Junod, goes on to detail Kevin’s vibrant heterosexuality, including a scene where he “dry humps” an adoring paramour named Cindy, but adding: “It’s the most inconclusive dry hump in the long and storied history of dry humps, the most ambiguous… because all the time he’s dry humping Cindy, he’s rolling his eyes. He looks for all the world like Jack Benny vamping with Rochester.”

I remember reading the article when it came out (pun intended) because I knew the rumors. Everybody knew the rumors. Years later came the accusations, the firing from House of Cards, the trials, and the acquittals.

Now, Spacey has hit the talk show circuit on a tour of redemption, making the rounds of a handful of popular podcasts, including the Lex Fridman podcast. I watched a bit of it last night, and found myself utterly charmed by Spacey. I got sucked in by the Jack Lemon impersonation, the thoughts on his craft, and his reflections on other great actors of the past, as well as his time working with some of the fantastic directors with whom he’s been associated. I was particularly struck by Spacey’s description of being directed by David Fincher, who once told him to reduce his acting to this maxim: “Just say the words and mean them.”

Is that lying? Or is that telling the truth?

And what is the truth?

When Fridman asks Spacey about the accusations, Kevin leans forward, his hands crossed like a schoolboy. He addresses the allegations with simple sincerity, his eyes never straying from Lex’s, his voice never raising. He acknowledges “mistakes,” but denies any criminality.

And, here’s the thing: his denials are seductive. His sincerity is seductive. His pain feels genuine. So does his remorse, for whatever offenses he may have unintentionally caused. I want to believe all of it because Kevin Spacey is such a good actor and seems like such a nice man and because he’s well-spoken and says he’s spent the last seven years reaching out to people and having “the conversations I needed to have” and his promise -repeated several times – never to “behave that way again in my life.”

I want to believe Kevin Spacey, but I don’t. To be clear: I don’t doubt his sincerity about the work he’s put in on himself and I don’t doubt his promise to never cross the boundaries he acknowledges in the interview having crossed. Whether or not he has it within him to keep that promise, I don’t know. What I don’t believe are his claims of innocence.

Of course, it doesn’t matter what I think.

What matters is what the public-at-large thinks. Will they ever welcome Kevin Spacey back into the fold? Will he ever regain a perch in Hollywood? That seems to be his goal, and he’s appearing in a number of independent films over the next year or so to reintroduce himself to the industroy and to the public, to remind them of what we all found so alluring about Kevin Spacey to begin with – that same ambiguity that informs his dry humping, all of his best characters, and informs Spacey himself.

The accusations against Spacey all paint a similar picture of a star using his fame and power to take advantage of younger, aspiring actors over decades. Watching him speak to Fridman, I felt like I understood the lies Spacey told his accusers and the ones he told himself. And, like I said, I wanted to believe those lies. They’re very good lies. But they’re lies. Even when he just says the words and means them.