Kevin Spacey in "Shrink"
You can take actor out of the theater but you can’t take the theater out of the actor. Kevin Spacey (who counts two Academy Awards and a Tony Award among his slew of honors) has been highly regarded as one of the best in the business, and he’s never forgotten his love of theater. For the past several years, this American actor/producer/director has been the artistic director of the Old Vic theater in London. He’s also maintained his movie career (with occasional forays into television) through his Trigger Street Productions and by playing characters who are usually troubled, complicated and expressing their rights to live freely as an individual — even if it comes at a personal or emotional cost.
Case in point: The independent drama "Shrink," in which Spacey plays Henry Carter, a California psychiatrist whose clients include several Hollywood celebrities, agents and other power players. But Carter is in need of therapy himself, since he’s suffering from depression, and he regularly smokes marijuana to dull his emotional pain. When Carter agrees to give free treatment to a troubled inner-city girl named Jemma (played by Keke Palmer), his life takes a turn that he doesn’t expect. While in New York City to promote "Shrink," Spacey held a press conference to talk about his real-life experience with therapy; how he handles the responsibilities of being an actor, director and producer; and which character role he’s reprising that has had a major impact on him.
When you play such an intense character like Henry Carter, is there a winding-down process for you, where you have to take some time to remove yourself from the character?
No. It’s very different in film than in theater. I don’t know how to explain this, but you don’t ever really play the character. What you play are bits of a character, moments of a character, spread out over 25 to 30 days on various locations and with various actors. I think if you’re playing a role that [requires] days and after days of being in the same place, [it’s harder to remove yourself]. There are aspects of this character where he had to be in a state of denial or a state of self-medication, but he certainly wasn’t grappling with his grief … He’s actually trying to avoid it. It’s really only through this remarkable young girl [Jemma, played by Keke Palmer], who gets thrown into his life that someone starts to penetrate through that haze.
There are times when you do a play when you are living in the character over a two-and-a-half-hour period or longer, and you come to the end of the night and you can feel like you were hit by a truck. There are some plays where I thought I might feel that way, but then there’s this period of where you do get to come down before the curtain call, where your character actually decreases that level of intensity, and by the curtain call, you’re actually OK. But there are other plays I’ve done where it’s hard for me to take the curtain call, where I’m still in the world [of the play]. Movies … you rarely experience that. At least, I rarely experience it. I’m able to hang up the character with the costume at the end of the movie.
Kevin Spacey in "Shrink"
Did you think about the book that Henry Carter had written?
I did think about the book that he worked on and written, although if you look at his shelf, there’s a whole slew of self-help books, and I always imagined him on "Oprah" and "Dr. Phil." So I had to think about what the books were about. [Henry Carter] is very popular and very well-known and very well-respected. His [book] titles might be a little sophomoric, but nevertheless, he’s very doing very well at his profession.
Did you ever have any real-life experiences with psychiatrists who cater to the entertainment industry?
I suspect you’re right: That in the entertainment profession, there is a whole slew of people making buckets of money as therapists. [He whispers jokingly] It doesn’t seem to be working.
The only real experiences I’ve had with therapists were the ones who were working with me and my family when my mother was ill. It’s a slightly different kind of therapy, although what they are and did brilliantly is preparing for what you might experience as a family member, emotionally. They were incredible at what they did, and they were very, very helpful and generous.
And I’ve had friends who’ve gone to therapy a lot. Not quite as much as Woody Allen, but quite a lot. And then I’ve had friends of mine who’ve gone to therapy for one specific issue … and they go and work on that. And whether that takes six months or eight months or 20 years, they say, "I’m done. That’s the issue I wanted to grapple with, and I grappled it."
I didn’t really meet with any psychologists, in the same way that when I did [the 1994 movie] "Swimming With Sharks," I didn’t meet with any studio executives or heads of studios. There just seemed to be enough in the script. And you also weren’t seeing [Henry Carter] at his best in therapy sessions. You were seeing him quite often self-medicated in his therapy sessions. And, as I say, it’s only this girl who begins to force him to come to grips with the things he’s experiencing and going through. That, to me, was the most satisfying relationship in this film.
Kevin Spacey in "Shrink"
Do you think "Shrink" will make Hollywood therapists look bad?
I suspect there are as many good ones as there are bad ones. The results are in the pudding.
Have you ever felt like you were like a therapist with any of your co-workers? And if so, did that help you identify with Henry Carter?
I certainly identify with the role of mentor and, to some degree, maybe teacher. I do a lot of work with kids at the Old Vic. And whenever we go around and take a play to other places, our educational work goes with us. That, for me, is a really incredible experience, because first of all — particularly when we work with kids who aren’t actors, because I work with a lot of kids who aren’t actors — it’s just about using the tools of theater as an ability for kids to come to grips with their own self-esteem and their own sense of themselves and their confidence.
When you work with kids who are not actors, first of all, kids will ask you anything, they’ll say anything, and they’re remarkably honest. And so you go on this journey with kids where I’m trying to help them find a part of themselves they’ve never explored, they’ve never experienced. And it’s particularly interesting when they have to do it in front of their peers or their teachers or their parents, and how sometimes very reluctant they are when they first begin. And over a two- or three-hour period of trying to encourage them and push them in certain directions, and by the end of that three hours to see where some of those kids have come is pretty incredible. That’s as close as to a kind of satisfying result that I’ve experienced in that kind of relationship. I’m not somebody who sits around giving actors I’m working with advice. I tend to just keep my head down.
Kevin Spacey in "Shrink"
With all due respect, you look terrible for most of "Shrink," since your character is supposed to be depressed. Was that makeup or are you a Method actor?
I had to look like sh*t. I can only say it’s a remarkable makeup department, [he says jokingly] because you can see I rarely look like sh*t. They worked really extra hard. They had to build me from the ground up, starting at 6 a.m., and they sort of reversed the process. There were a lot of times where we did some seriously bad, almost bruising-under-your-eyes, sweat. And there are many days in the film where I didn’t shave, so I looked as absolutely unkempt as you can possibly get. It’s a bit silly when they come around to the mirror and say, "How do you think you look?" "I look like sh*t." It’s exactly how I’m supposed to look. And you get a little hint at the end of the movie that he’s [Henry Carter] starting to pull his head out of his own ass and walk toward shaving. And actually, it’s kind of fun. It’s nice to play a character that looks like sh*t and not concerned about it.
Kevin Spacey in "Shrink"
What was it about the "Shrink" screenplay that attracted you the most?
It made me laugh about the narcissism that is Los Angeles. It touched me, because of the relationship with Keke Palmer’s character. I just really thought there was something so genuine about that girl and the way in which she came into his life and the things they end up helping each other get through and the similarities of their grief.
Keke was, for me, so cool to work with, and we had such a great time. She’s a great example of somebody who’s really talented and got her feet on the ground [and has a] great family. Her mother was with us all the time. In fact, her mother really helped Keke. There was this one scene where Keke has to cry when I’m reading the letter that she asked me to read, and Keke couldn’t just get there. She was really upset and she really wanted to do it right. She didn’t just want to cry; she wanted to burst out crying.
And we were shooting and were literally in the middle of a scene and there were two cameras rolling. And then suddenly Keke went, "I’ll be right back!" And suddenly, Keke went out of the room and [the cameras] were still rolling … And literally, three minutes later, she came back and sat down and we started the scene again and then she said, "I’ll be right back!" And she ran out of the room again.
And I’m thinking, "There’s something going on. I don’t know what it is, but I’m just going to go with it." And finally, she came back, I turned around, and she did the scene and she burst into tears. And I found out later was that she was going out and talking to her mom. And her mom was telling her, "Remember when you got really sick?" She was giving her all this background and emotional stuff for her to both imagine and remember. And her mother finally got her where she wanted to get, and Keke was very pleased about that. But it was very, very funny seeing that she was gone out of the room, and we kept rolling.
Kevin Spacey in "Shrink"
A lot of actors say that acting is a form of therapy. Do you agree and, if so, how did you get insight into yourself by playing any of the characters you’ve played?
I do think acting is a great form of therapy, because you get to express emotions and go to places that most people don’t get a chance to do in their daily lives. You get physically go places and emotionally go places. So I always thought it was a very open and generous way to delve into your own psyche. And I think if you are habitually forced to look at life from someone else’s point of view or put yourself in someone else’s shoes — which is what the job of acting is — it’s an incredibly humanizing force. And I think one of the most positive things, from not just this [actor] side of it, but from the viewer’s side of it, is that it makes it harder to be prejudiced against other people. When you actually have to go where you understand what motivate somebody and why someone did something. I’ve had recent experiences where the job of being an actor is like being a detective or being a therapist. You have to honor motive versus how it looked or how someone had taken it.
I just played Jack Abramoff in this film ["Casino Jack"] about this disgraced lobbyist. It’s so interesting to honor the facts versus the impression, honor motive versus the way people decide, "Someone must’ve been like this." Our job is, in certain ways, to shed light in places that are dark. And I certainly think that’s what therapists — the good ones — try to do. So yes, I think acting is great therapy.
I’m about to have the experience again of playing a character who profoundly affected me when I play Clarence Darrow. [Spacey played Darrow in the 1991 TV-movie "Darrow."] It profoundly affected me: his ideas and exploring who he was. And I’m about to do "Inherit the Wind" at the Old Vic, which is based on the Scopes Monkey Trial, so I’m about to be able to go back to a character who I have enormous affection for and lumber around in his ideas for a couple of months, which I’m quite excited about.
Kevin Spacey in "American Beauty"
Lester Burnham (your character in "American Beauty") and Henry Carter are each unhappy and disillusioned with their lives. Can you compare and contrast these two characters?
The thing about Lester, in comparison to Henry Carter, is I never thought that Lester gave up. Despite what Lester was facing and despite his hating his job and hating his life and hating his marriage and where it was, I always thought he was a wining personality. I never thought that he was somebody who allowed himself to fall into the muck that he couldn’t climb himself out.
I think Carter is quite different. I think Carter actually kind of embraces his muck. He’s about there in it. It takes a lot to get him out of it. In fact, it’s surprising things that get him out of it in the end. And maybe it has to do with that Lester is kind of in an unmanned suburbia and Henry Carter is knee-deep in Los Angeles, which is the narcissistic capital of the world. I think that the obvious similarity is that [both characters have the habit of] smoking pot and self-medicating, but I think Lester is smoking much better sh*t.
Is it true you’ll be at the Rome Film Festival this year?
I don’t know if I’ve been invited … It all depends on whether the dates coincide with the production schedule that I have, because I’m performing every day except Mondays in "Inherit the Wind." It depends. The good thing about being in London is that Rome is not that far away, as is any major capital European city.
Kevin Spacey in "21"
Can you talk about your experience teaching at Oxford University?
I was very honored to be the visiting professor of contemporary theatre at St. [Catherine’s College] at Oxford. It was a year-long position. [He says jokingly] I was a little disappointed I didn’t actually get a robe as a professor. They don’t robe you, because apparently that would upset the ones who actually work for tenure.
What was most interesting about it was they don’t have a drama department at Oxford, at St. Cat’s at least. So you’ve got kids who are studying the Greeks, studying the classics, studying math, studying sciences and you have to ferret out the secret directors and the wannabe actors and the playwrights. And so they can come to any of the workshops they sign up [for]. And so you slowly start to realize that the guy taking math wants to be a secret playwright, but apparently they’re not allowed to talk about it with their other professors. And I said, "Guys, by showing up to my workshop, you’re blowing it, because now they all know that you’re the secret artist in waiting."
So for that reason, it was interesting, because you weren’t dealing with people who were going to do it as a profession, necessarily. They were incredibly willing to go to a lot of places. We did a lot of workshops with these kids. And some of them who were not used to performing would get up — because I would make them get up and perform — and I was probably there about 10 or 11 times over the past year. I was very happy to have done it.
What advice would you give to theater students?
If you’ve trained, that’s great, if you’ve come out of a theater school that was really about training and not [just] academic. Training is one of the most important things for a young actor or actress to do. Learn abut your instrument, learn about your voice … even if you want to go into film and television. In my opinion, the truth is, most actors who’ve had the best careers, the most illustrious careers and did the most extraordinary work in film were the ones that came out of theater. And you can go back in the history of movies, and I think that that’s true. Even though we have much more content in film and television, I think you cannot go wrong by learning your craft as a theater artist.
Kevin Spacey in "21"
In "Shrink," Keke Palmer’s character finds emotional solace by going to the movies. Have you had similar experiences?
Absolutely! The Melody Theatre in Thousand Oaks, California, which is gone, the Nuart Theatre in Santa Monica, which is still there, we used to go all the time. When I was 15, 16, 17, 18, we used to go all the time. And we would see Peter Brooks’ "King Lear" and we would see "Eraserhead" and we would see the midnight shows they had. But we would go and see films that you couldn’t see anywhere else.
I just remember once we were so angry because the [film] prints they used to have were really bad — like, really bad, jumping all over the place — that we actually knocked on the owner’s door one day and screamed at him that he should change the name of the theater from Nuart to Old Art. But we saw incredible movies.
There’s no doubt in my mind that whatever town you live in, whatever experience you’re having as a kid, to be able to escape into film — even if it was the late, late show on CBS, where I discovered a lot of my actors for the first time on late-night television movies — there’s nothing like it when you’re a kid and you discover films for the first time. And also you feel like you’re grown-up, because you’re sometimes sneaking into movies you shouldn’t be watching, because you’re underage for it, but somebody buys you a ticket. Very cool. "Straw Dogs" I saw when I should’ve never have seen "Straw Dogs." It scared the sh*t out of me!
In "Shrink," Robin Williams has an uncredited role as a sex-addict actor who’s one of Henry Carter’s patients. What was it like working with Robin? He loves to improvise, so how much of your scenes with him were improvised?
Some of it was in the script. I’ve known Robin for a long time, and what I liked about working with him and what I liked about the several scenes we had was he would riffing and improv-ing and doing jokey kind of stuff. In a way, that’s what you kind of expect when you see Robin …
But then, I really liked the fact that he let me nail him and tell him to stop it. And he did. To me, that was pretty great that he was willing to, in a sense be the Robin Williams that you expect, and then not. To me, that was the best part of shooting those scenes. And a lot of it was improv, because Robin was going off. And I was going off in trying to stop him. Some of that stuff wasn’t written, like just telling [Robin’s character], "You can be as funny as you want to be and crack jokes all day, but that’s not going to solve your problems." And I thought it was pretty cool of Robin to go there.
We had a really nice time. Of course, he’s so much fun to work with. It’s crazy. And I’m so happy that he’s doing great and he’s healthy. His operation [heart surgery] was terrifically successful and I’m very pleased about that.
Kevin Spacey in "Beyond the Sea"
As an actor who’s also taken on the responsibilities of being a director and producer in your career, how would you describe your style when it comes to dealing with the challenges and problems that come up as a producer and/or director?
I try very hard to pay very little attention to bullsh*t. Because people can create drama; it seems like it’s all they can do: create drama where there was none before. And that usually happens when you have 37 producers on a movie who don’t actually produce. They’re there, they’re sitting in chairs, but they don’t do anything.
The job of producing, I think, is to provide a film with the resources it needs financial[ly] and the resources in terms of a crew, in terms of people who are good at what they do, professional at what they do, and be part of creating an environment where a director can get his or her vision onto the screen. That’s the job.
Now, there’s a lot of producers who think they’re creative producers, so they like to get their thumb and finger in every single pie going. That’s not the kind of producer I am. I like to trust the people I hire. And certainly, my job as a producer at Trigger Street with my partner Dana Brunetti, or my job at the Old Vic as an artistic director, is to be a magnet and to try to bring together all those elements that you think will best serve the telling of that story. Because ultimately that’s the job: to serve the story, serve the writer. Certainly in theater: serve the writer.
I just don’t pay much attention to all the drama. I focus on the work you have to do, try to work with great people, try to trust the artists that you bring on and hire. Because I think it affects a director and a writer and actors if they feel they’re constantly being watched like hawks, like somehow you don’t trust them. When we do a play at the Old Vic, I don’t show up at rehearsal if I’m not the director of the play until they’re ready for me to come. I trust the people I hire. And I think that sense of confidence for them is huge.
Certainly on a film set, every single day on a film set, you’re going to run into problems, things you didn’t expect, a location that doesn’t work out quite the way that you thought, an actor who’s not quite doing the performance that you hoped. There are a thousand things that can happen in any given day on a movie. No movie goes brilliantly smoothly every day. But that’s the challenge of it: not to stop those things from happening, because that’s life; it’s how you respond to those things as a producer or director that I think makes the great producers and directors of this world.
So I just try to never, ever allow the B.S. to come to the working environment in a way that anyone really notices. Try to keep a happy environment, because I think people who are in an environment that feels creative and feels supportive then come to work every day wanting to do the best job. So that’s my modus operandi.
Kevin Spacey (center) in "Superman Returns"
How do you manage to juggle doing movies and theater as an actor? Do you regret having to turn down movie roles because of your theater commitments?
I don’t regret it yet. You know, I’m seven years living in London, coming into our fifth season of work at the Old Vic. And the truth is, when I started at the Old Vic, a part of me thought that Trigger Street, my company with Dana, would take a hit. I wasn’t going to be around to take meetings, to lead things. But oddly, we’ve never been busier. Oddly, we’ve never had more things going, both in the independent world and in the studio world.
The balance for me is struck by an extraordinary staff. I have a great staff. And certainly, Dana running Trigger Street allows me to do the work that I’m doing in London. And I have a great staff in London. And I believe in — as I said earlier — trusting the people I work with.
And I delegate. That’s one of the biggest things you can learn, particularly for me. I have a level of perfectionism. I want things to be perfect, but I don’t have to be involved in everything. And I think over the last number of years, I’ve learned to trust the people that I’ve hired in every single department. And if something goes wrong, it goes wrong, and we’ll fix it.
I don’t judge people hugely. I don’t think if someone does one thing wrong it makes them terrible at their job. Sometimes what I learn is that somebody’s just sitting in the wrong seat on the bus, and if you move them to a different seat, they’ll flourish.
So we’ve got a staff now of some 56 at the Old Vic — and we originally started with me and a producer with a dressing room and a phone. We have a smaller staff at Trigger Street, but Dana runs that company brilliantly. So the balance for me has worked out all right. My priority has been at the Old Vic, and I sneak movies in when I can. But to me, it’s no different when movies were my priority and I was sneaking in plays. I’ve just sort of flipped it on its head, and so far it’s working all right.
Photo credits: Photos #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6: Roadside Attractions. Photo #7: DreamWorks Pictures. Photos #8, 9: Columbia Pictures. Photo #10: Lionsgate Films. Photo #11: Warner Bros. Pictures.
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