Kevin Spacey is in the middle of talking when he glances across the table and gets a good look at the shiny new oversized Superman action figure before him. He stops in mid-sentence, exclaiming: “What the f**k is that?!”
Welcome to the world of Superman. Or more precisely, Superman Returns. It’s the Oscar-winning actor’s first foray into the big-budget, blockbuster realm of superhero movies, and even months after filming his turn as the Man of Steel’s arch nemesis, he’s still getting some surprises, including a Lex Luthor toy in his image. “I’ve seen a prototype, but this is my first action figure,” said Spacey, admiring his plastic mini-me. Still, he’s no stranger to playing charmingly evil bad guys, and Hollywood.com talked with Spacey about playing the one villain bad enough to pit his brain against Superman’s brawn.
Hollywood.com: How do you take on the role of an iconic movie villain like Lex Luthor and avoid aping Gene Hackman, the actor who made him famous in films—consciously or otherwise?
Kevin Spacey: First rule: don’t watch Gene Hackman. Trust your director, which I do implicitly, and in a sense when Bryan [Singer] first started talking to me about it about a year before I actually got offered it he always said that it was going to be darker and more bitter and that it was going to be Lex out for revenge. So I took the role on even before I read a script, and then when I started to see the script I saw exactly what they were doing, in terms of shaking the storyline and the character. Then on the set there was a lot of sort of honing and a lot of discussions about what line was exactly right and what helps this and what made this funny and so on. So it was just a complete blast, but when you had the experience that I had with Bryan ten years ago—and he’s the same man that he was then—it was like a day hadn’t gone by with us. We just have a language, and it gives you such confidence as an actor to work with a director so absolutely clear about what his vision is and what a scene should be about and how to approach it. And you just try and give him as many different colors as possible and hopefully he cuts it together in a way that all goes well.
HW: Is it true that Bryan mentioned Superman to you as his dream project as early as on the set of The Usual Suspects?
KS: He might have, but if he did I don’t recall it. What I do know is that we had some kind of conversation when I went in to meet Tim Burton 10 or 11 years ago, when Tim was going to do Superman. Apparently Tim wanted me to play the Lex Luthor part. I never read a script, but it was apparently an entirely different scenario and I think that it was Nic Cage[as Superman]. Anyway, that didn’t get made. I remember that we had a conversation then about it and I think that it was then I remember Bryan saying, “Ah, what an incredible thing that would be.” He was always such a huge fan of the genre and the comic book and had such respect for it. I think that in a way it’s great, because I think that they all approached it with a certain reverence for the [Richard] Donner films, a complete respect for the fan base and I think that it probably has a feeling of enormous homage to that style.
HW: Were you into Superman as a kid yourself?
KS: When I was a kid I was into model cars and rockets and stuff like that. I wasn’t a comic book reader, and so I was never into it that way. I have a vague memory of the TV series, reruns of the original series. Then I remember when the first Donner film came out. We all went down to the Westwood theater on a Friday night and we were going to see Brando because we were all actors in drama classes. We were like, “Let’s go see Brando. So cool that he’s in Superman.”
HW: Do you consider those original films classics?
KS: Yeah, and I think that’s probably why I didn’t want to watch the Donner films again because…I just played Richard II at The Old Vic, and there are film performances and recordings of [Sir John] Gielgud doing Richard II, and I just absolutely avoided them because you have to approach it in your own way. It’s the same way that we love to see actors take on similar parts. How many actors have played Hamlet or how many actors have played Richard III? Part of the joy is seeing how a different actor will approach something. So I just kind of avoided it, but it’s absolutely iconic and a lot of fun and I always hoped that the performance in the movie would have as much humor as I think that kind of role offers.
HW: What was your first reaction to seeing Brandon in the costume?
KS: “There’s Superman.” When I first arrived in Sydney on the set they were shooting and I came over to the set to visit Bryan and Brandon was walking out of The Daily Planet dressed as Superman and I was like, “Oh, f**k. There is Superman.”
HW: We’re told you had a little fun with Brandon by staying a little in character even when you weren’t in front of the cameras?
KS: Well, you know when you’re a movie set they give you a golf cart so that you can drive around in them to get from one place to another. So I had my golf cart kind of souped-up. I had Kryptonite stripes put on the side and I had a big Superman logo on the front with an X through it and it was called “The Super Buster.” And then we tied a Superman doll on the back with a chain, so I just dragged it around. So by the end of the shoot it was just this fucking ball of mess with a little cape and I had a bullhorn that I used to scream through, saying “Superman must die!” [Laughs] I can remember when I was driving back from the stage and Brandon was coming out of his trailer and he hadn’t seen this yet and I went “Superman must die!” It was so funny.
HW: That scene where you scream at Lois Lane–“Wrong!!”–is so great it makes the trailer. How many takes of that were there?
KS: I suspect that that was probably an afternoon of yelling, but we also did it very quietly. You always try to not end up giving a director only one choice in editing because sometimes you get in editing and you think, ‘Oh, God, did he ever not do it that way?’
HW: Where would you like to take the character of Luthor next as an actor?
KS: I don’t know. The good news is that I don’t have to think about that. The good news is that if it’s Bryan and the writers who worked on this, I have absolute faith in them. The truth is that they may well have already thought about the life of it after this, but if they have, they haven’t revealed these secrets to me. But when you’re fortunate enough to have a director like Bryan and writers like that, you just sort of put yourself in their hands and say, “Hey guys, whatever you want me to do.”
