Actor Kevin Spacey had been at the peak of his career when he was accused of s*xual assault and was put on trial. Many reports of assault and misconduct came out as part of the Weinstein Effect, which led him to lose out on most of his acting commitments at the time. The actor was also dropped from his long-running Netflix show House of Cards.
Spacey was reportedly cleared of his charges in 2023 and was ready to get back to work again. The two-time Oscar winner won his first Academy Award for his performance as Verbal Kint in Bryan Singer’s cult classic The Usual Suspects. The character was reportedly written with Spacey in mind as he was not too famous at the time, which would have given the twist away.
Kevin Spacey Was Cast In The Usual Suspects Due to His Relative Anonymity
The year 1995 seemed to be Kevin Spacey’s best year as he had his breakthrough with two cult classics. The actor starred as the antagonist in Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects and in David Fincher’s Se7en, though he had a relatively smaller role in the latter. Spacey won his first Academy Award for the former, winning in the Best Supporting Actor category.
X-Men director Bryan Singer’s cult classic The Usual Suspects follows the aftermath of a heist gone wrong and the only survivor, Spacey’s Verbal Kint’s account of how he came to be a part of the heist. The whole film is told through the view of this unreliable narrator, who also builds up a legendary crime lord named Keyser Söze as one of the perpetrators of the massacre.
After Kint convinces the in-charge officer of his story, it is revealed at the end that Kint was Keyser Söze all along and that most of what he said was concocted by taking inspiration from a bulletin board behind the officer. For the twist to work, however, Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie reportedly did not want to cast an established actor.
McQuarrie, who wrote the Oscar-winning script for the film, mentioned that they picked Spacey because of his relative anonymity at the time. He said to Cinetropolis (via Nicki Swift),
“If you’d put the biggest actor in the movie in the role of Verbal, the audience would be thinking, ‘When is Dustin Hoffman going to stop limping?’. Kevin, who is a very gifted actor, was not the guy you would expect to suddenly be the villain, especially at that stage in his career.”
Bryan Singer too reportedly wanted to work with Spacey and reportedly told The Guardian that the House of Cards star had a sly and fun quality about him that worked best for Verbal Kint. He also mentioned that he loved Spacey’s performance in Glengarry Glen Ross. The gamble paid off as the twist is often regarded as a pop cultural milestone.
Kevin Spacey Gets A Two-Part Documentary On His Life And Career
Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects launched Kevin Spacey’s Hollywood career, which has seen many wins and setbacks. The actor was accused of s*xual assault and misconduct by multiple men in 2017. The actor was dropped from several of his projects including the final season of House of Cards, a Netflix film called Gore, and the film All the Money in the World (via THR).
After six years, Spacey was cleared of nine charges of s*xual assault and misconduct by a court in the U.K. According to THR, Space was on trial as he served as the artistic director of London’s Old Vic Theater. The judgment marked the end of one of the most important cases to come out during the #MeToo Movement, which began after Harvey Weinstein’s allegations.
Spacey is reportedly all set to make a comeback of sorts with the documentary Spacey Unmasked. The two-part documentary was reportedly produced by Channel 4 and the US rights were reportedly acquired by HBO Max and ID. It is set to follow Spacey’s career and the s*xual assault allegations that he faced. The documentary is also set to show interviews of various men who had interacted with the Se7en star (via Variety).
