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[ A M E R I C A N _.S Q U I R M__B Y__S A R A H_.V O W E L L ] 
____WHAT IS IT ABOUT THE OSCAR-WINNING ACTOR THAT MAKES HIM SO COMPELLING?
Kevin Spacey won an Academy Award for his portrayal of patsy Verbal Kint in 1995's "The Usual Suspects." Ever since that film, I've been trying to figure out why. With some actors, you just know right away, that one little trait that makes you buy the ticket. Maybe it's Parker Posey's way with chewing gum, or how Renee Zellweger's face is all moonglow, or that Anne Bancroft has always possessed consistently talented hair. It might be that America in particular and the world in general is obsessed with actors not because they're so good-looking or they're so famous or so glamorous, but because deep down we don't precisely understand how they do what they do. Kevin Spacey, though, might be the most mysterious cypher of them all. He's a compelling, often sexy presence without being classically handsome. He comes off human, though not always humane, and he's best on screen playing characters who are not only intelligent, but in the know. He just has something. The question is, what? It was the surprise ending of "The Usual Suspects" that gave Spacey's work in that film extra panache. (Warning: I'm about to give away that ending.) Only in the last couple of minutes do you discover that Verbal, the childish, jabbering, petty thief of a cripple is actually an evil mastermind -- "the devil himself" -- named Keyser Soze. When Verbal is walking away from the police station, you might be tempted to locate Spacey's genius right there in the legs. That's where the camera is. Verbal limps away until the split second his knee straightens, exposing him as the fast-walking Keyzer Soze. That move, a walking pivot that's more dance than gait, is pure Fred Astaire. But still, that's not it. Maybe Spacey's secret is the ordinariness in the way he talks. He has no Jack Nicholson bite, none of the dense comic gruffness of "L.A. Confidential" costar Danny DeVito. But "The Usual Suspects" sets you up right away thinking about it; the first scene has Spacey at the police station in a spotlight reporting on the botched truck robbery that begins the story, "The driver didn't see anybody but somebody fucked up. He heard a voice. Sometimes that's all you need." Spacey's character is named Verbal, after all. But Spacey's voice still isn't the answer to his appeal. Most of his best scenes -- in "A Time to Kill," in "Swimming With Sharks," in "L.A. Confidential" -- are decidedly non-verbal. In a cover story in the summer issue of the cigar magazine Smoke, Spacey infers that he maintains his mystery by keeping his private life private. (All I know about him is that he has a dog and went to high school with either Sandra Bullock or Mare Winningham, I forget which.) He tells writer Jeff Weinstock, "'I knew nothing about Jimmy Stewart. I knew nothing about Henry Fonda. I knew nothing about Spencer Tracy. When I was growing up and watching those actors, I knew nothing about them. Didn't have to, it didn't matter. I wasn't being influenced by their time, by publicity, by magazines. All of this stuff is dust. What we're doing right now is dust.'" While he probably has a point about his personal life having nothing to do with his work, I don't think his privacy has much to do with his je ne sais quoi. Curiously, we have Al Pacino to thank for providing the key to Spacey. Pacino put Spacey in his Shakespeare documentary about Richard III, "Looking For Richard." Pacino invited his actor friends to help him stage "Richard III." There are a lot of scenes in which the actors sit around tables talking; or, more precisely, they sit around tables listening to Pacino. Spacey, who plays Buckingham, barely speaks until the end. And yet he has the hugest presence. Pacino's tearing his hair out about Shakespeare, and all Spacey has to do is sit there in a baseball cap, smirking. That's it! I think: His mouth. Spacey's secret to success is that barely suppressed laugh of his, a constant suspicion that he's on the verge of a giggle that would almost be smarmy if it didn't hint at some inner joy. So I rewatched all his movies looking only at the mouth, seeking out the smile. (You know you're obsessed when you rent "The Ref" more than once.) Here's the thing: Smiles don't work without eyes backing them up. It's the eyes, the eyes, the eyes. It's Kevin Spacey's eyes. Weinstock, praising Spacey's death scene as cop Jack Vincennes in "L.A. Confidential," notes, "You can register the very instant Spacey's pupils freeze up, still as a stopped second hand." I knew I was really onto something when I heard John Berendt on "Fresh Air." Berendt, the author of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," was talking with Terry Gross about the film version of his novel, starring Spacey as the Savannah antiques dealer accused of murder. Berendt mentioned the opening line of the book, which describes the character Spacey would play: "He was tall, about fifty, with darkly handsome, almost sinister features: a neatly trimmed mustache, hair turning silver at the temples, and eyes so black they were like the tinted windows of a sleek limousine -- he could see out, but you couldn't see in." Even though Berendt goes on to point out that he heard Spacey went out and
got black contacts for the role, he hardly needed them. Is this not a perfect
description of the actor himself? All his eyes' giggles and squints, sideways-glances and rolls, flash hints of meaning but never reveal. Even Kevin Spacey's eyes are tight-lipped. It's hardly surprising that Spacey's drawn to roles in suspense films -- including the upcoming "The Negotiator" -- because his eyes are miniature mystery movies bouncing around the screen. Maybe that's why every time I see his picture these days, a song pops into my head, the one
where Iris DeMent says, "Think I'll just let the mystery be."
Is Kevin
Spacey gay? Who cares? Esquire readers! The men's mag's nudge-nudge piece drags the actor in and out of the closet like a vacuum cleaner.
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