How Spacey's career came down like a house of cards

As anew documentary reveals more harrowing allegations against the star of American Beauty’, Nick Hilton tells the story of an actor whose own character remains an enigma

- Nick Hilton

Who is Kevin Spacey? Is he the kid, growing up in southern California with an abusive father who denied the Holocaust? Is he the naive young man, appearing on stage for the first time as a spear-carrier in Henry VI, Part 1? Is he the exuberant actor racing to collect his first Oscar – Best Supporting Actor for The Usual Suspects – to a sea of cheers from the Hollywood glitterati? Or is he really, at his core, the man we see now: ostracised from the acting community, the subject of continual lawsuits and a new television exposé, which will ignite new conversations following further allegations of predatory behaviour?

The story of Spacey, born in 1959 in an unglamorous part of New Jersey, is in many ways a classic of American creative achievement. No famous family or industry connections, just a rapacious appetite for success.

At Juilliard, the renowned performing arts school, Spacey was told that his voice sounded “like the end of a frayed rope”. In an address he gave to students in 2007, he recalled that teacher telling him: “Don’t you realise that I’m the hardest on you because I think you’re the most talented, but I also know you’re the laziest?” The path taken by Spacey in the years after graduation in 1981 would prove to be anything but lazy.