The tumultuous life of Kevin Spacey

What you need to know:

  • Kevin Spacey Fowler KBE (Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, a grade within the British order of chivalry) is 58.
  • He was born in South Orange, New Jersey, to Kathleen Ann (née Knutson) and Thomas Geoffrey Fowler.
  • Both his parents are now deceased. His has Swedish (from his maternal grandfather) and English ancestry.

A few hours after Anthony Rapp’s allegations came out, Kevin Spacey took to Twitter saying he had no recollection of whether the incident did take place. He however apologised for “what would have been inappropriate drunken behaviour and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these year.”

Spacey, in the same apology, then stated he has now chosen to live as a gay man.

Unlike other celebrities who came out, Spacey’s has been received with backlash after he declined the opportunity to come out on numerous occasions throughout the years claiming his right to privacy.

Kevin Spacey’s personal relationships have been private affairs, with not much being substantiated.

Kevin Spacey Fowler KBE (Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, a grade within the British order of chivalry) is 58.

He was born in South Orange, New Jersey, to Kathleen Ann (née Knutson) and Thomas Geoffrey Fowler.

Both his parents are now deceased. His has Swedish (from his maternal grandfather) and English ancestry.

Here are other facts about his life:

1. Their father was a member of the American Nazi party and even shaved his moustache to look like Adolf Hitler’s.

2.  He has two older siblings; Julie Ann Fowler and Randall Fowler, and a nephew and niece. Julie ran away from their home when she had turned 18.The siblings are all estranged now.

3. Randall, a limo driver and Rod Stewart impersonator living in Idaho, claimed that their father had abused them as children, including raping him in his adolescence and physically beating their sister. He says Kevin went into acting to escape the “darkness” while he (Randall) has never wanted to have kids of his own lest they 'inherit the sexual predator gene.'

4. According to IMDb, the family eventually settled in southern California, where young Kevin developed a very mischievous character. He set his sister's tree house on fire and was shipped off to the Northridge Military Academy, only to be thrown out a few months later for knocking a classmate on the head with a tyre.

5. Randall has gone through three marriages and 40 affairs because of their upbringing, according to an interview he had given in 2004. He says Spacey “retreated into himself to stay out of trouble” after seeing what his father put him through, as he stood behind him with a riding whip while forcing him to read white supremacist propaganda.

6. Spacey managed to channel his dramatic tendencies into a successful amateur acting career at Chatsworth High School in the San Fernando Valley. In his senior year, he played Captain von Trapp opposite classmate Mare Winningham's Maria in The Sound of Music (the pair later graduated as co-valedictorians).

7. The adolescent Spacey worked up celebrity impersonations (James Stewart and Johnny Carson were two of his favorites) to try out on the amateur comedy club circuit.

8. He started his career as a stage actor, and it was when both he and Rapp were in productions running on Broadway that their paths crossed. Spacey won a Tony Award for his role as Uncle Louie in Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers in 1991.

9. His first Academy Award was for Best Supporting Actor for his role in “The Usual Suspects” (1995). He then won an Academy Award for Best Actor for “American Beauty” (1999). He was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame also in 1999.

10. In April 2000, a Canadian Star Magazine had photos of Spacey and an unidentified male model as they made out in a Los Angeles park.

11. He was artistic director of the famous London theatre Old Vic from 2003 until he was succeeded by Matthew Warchus in 2015. They said there weren’t any complaints forwarded against him during this time.

12.One of the movies he’s famed for locally is 2008-release 21 starring as an MIT lecturer who was using his brightest students to swindle casinos in Las Vegas by counting cards.

13. In September 2008, The Sun had pictures of Spacey pulling down shorts of a man and grabbing his bare butt at “a wild party” in Croatia.

14. In 2011, it was announced that Spacey was cast as Frank Underwood in the Netflix series House of Cards.

15. He executive produced the biographical survival thriller film Captain Phillips in 2013, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and inspired by 2009 hijacking of a US container ship by Somali pirates.

16. He was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series at the 65th Primetime Emmy Awards in 2013 becoming the first lead actor to be Primetime Emmy nominated from a web television series.

17.  He won the Golden Globe award for Best Actor in a Television Series Drama at the 72nd Golden Globe Awards (2014) and Screen Actors Guild nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series at the 21st Screen Actors Guild Awards for his season 2 performance (2015).

18. He hosted the Tony Awards in 2017.

19. The Kevin Spacey Foundation works in partnership with universities in the UK and the US to offer KSF Scholarships (full or part) to talented applicants of performing arts and film undergraduate programs.

20. Spacey had claimed he was mugged in a London park in 2004, but later retracted his statement after it was rumoured he had tried to seduce a waiter who didn’t like his suggestion as he turned out to be straight. Heather Unruh, a former American news anchor, also claimed he sexually assaulted “a loved one” when Harvey Weinstein’s victims started coming forward.

21. All the Money a movie starring Spacey and Mark Wahlberg is scheduled for release in December 2017.