Kevin Spacey Q&A

Spacey gives us the lowdown on playing the most famous bald villain of them all.

Jul 14 2006

Kevin Spacey was born to play Lex Luthor, so it's a good job that Bryan Singer cast him in the role in 'Superman Returns'. Earlier in the week we caught up with him to discuss playing the Man of Steel's nemesis, and this is what he had to say.

Is it right that when Tim Burton was attached to his project he also wanted you to play Lex Luthor?

We had a meeting one afternoon at Warner Brothers, I think when I was filming 'LA Confidential', it was that long ago. He showed me some storyboards and costume ideas but I never read a script, I never got offered the part and it never happened. Then I heard that Brett Ratner was talking about me when he came onboard, but that never happened. So I was awfully pleased when Bryan got in touch.

Do you think it's better for you that the part has come along ten years later?

I don't know if I would have done it then if it had been offered to me. There were a lot of questions that I had about it. And at that time Nic Cage was supposed to play the part, and I like Nicolas Cage but have always felt it should be an unknown for the leap of faith you've got to make. So I don't know if I would have done it because I never got the chance to find out.

Does it bother you that all these people saw you as Lex Luthor?

At the time it made sense, because originally, the two or three films that I had just done were 'Swimming With Sharks', 'The Usual Suspect' and 'Se7en', so I was the evil guy of the month. The fact that Bryan also had the idea was fantastic, because Bryan is so clever about these dualities – the Superman/Clark Kent duality and the duality that we had in 'Suspects'. And in many ways if you look at Bryan's work it's always about outsiders.

How did you and Bryan see Lex Luthor in this film?

There are certain foundations to a character like this that are built in. That are established before you put on those shoes. So he's got to be bald, he got to be a capitalist, he wants property and he's got to be funny. Then there's this new element that Bryan and the writers wanted, which was not to have Lex Luthor be a comic book villain, but to have him be a real, frightening, scary challenge for Superman. It's balancing that – how do you make it real and scary and provide the villainy that the film asks for and at the same time have it be entertaining? But when you have a director as clear about the totality of the movie as Bryan is you trust him.

How do you feel about having a doll of yourself?

It's pretty funny – I've never had an action figure. On the opening night, after the party, I was on my way to a little gathering at a hotel and I had them stop off at a 7/11 to get a Slurpy cup because I'm on a Slurpy, but the machine wasn't working so it was a bit sad – I ended up with an empty cup. It's bizarre – I saw myself on a cereal box the other day in New York. It's a strange thing how films like this spawn this marketing – you cannot help but be inundated with that Superman image. I can't believe the number of things – there's tricycles, lunchboxes, Frisbees – the amount of stuff is incredible. They sent me a box of shit in LA and I thought 'oh my god, this is insane.'

When you accepted the role did you go back and explore the mythology behind the characters?

Here's the god's honest truth about it – I didn't do a stitch of research. Part of that had to do with trusting Bryan. He was the person that was guiding all those little things that he wanted as homage to the Donner films – stylistically, bringing the music back, the cameos – which are a nod to the heritage of the character. So I knew Bryan would take care of that. I didn't want to watch the original movies again either because I thought that I'm too good of a mimic and Hackman's too good of an actor for me not to want to steal from him if I watched it again. It was only afterwards when I did the voiceover for a Superman documentary that I learnt all this stuff that I didn't know. So I really approached it as a pure acting assignment and trusted the material and my own instincts and again put myself in Bryan's hands – he's the captain of the ship.

How much do you feel you owe Bryan Singer for your career taking off as it has?

I owe him a lot. When I met Bryan it was at a screening of a film he did previous to 'The Usual Suspects' called 'Public Access'. And I just knew after seeing that film, that that was a filmmaker. I went to a reception after the screening and went up to him, and this was about a year before I got the script for 'Suspects', and said 'If you're ever in the market for an actor…' And he and (writer) Chris McQuarrie knew me because they had watched a television series I had done several episodes on called 'Wiseguy', in which I played a really crazy megalomaniac character. That was the first thing I'd ever done on film that people paid attention to. And I didn't know it at the time but they were writing 'Suspects' with me in mind because they'd seen this series. I got offered the script and offered the role, but then I began to find out, because Bryan as usual was being very honest with me about it, that they were pressuring him to re-cast me. Serious pressure was coming down on him from the money people because they wanted a famous actor. Bryan made a consistent argument that you cannot have somebody who has a history play Verbal Kint. Verbal Kint has to be a vessel, has to be an unknown, otherwise you tip it. The audience is expecting that that person is going to turn out to be somebody, and they can't. He was offered millions of dollars on the budget and he stuck to his guns, so I owe him because he stuck with me and he fought for me in the earliest days of my film career. And we've been trying for ten years to find a project to do together. A couple of times we came kind of close but it didn't happen so I was thrilled when he gave me this opportunity to work with him again and it was like a day hadn't gone by.

'Superman Returns' is out today. To read Time Out's interview with Superman himself, Brandon Routh, click here.

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