[11][12][13] His brother has stated that their father, whom he described as a racist "Nazi supporter", was sexually and physically abusive, and that Spacey shut down emotionally and became "very sly and smart" to avoid beatings.

[14] Spacey first addressed the matter in October 2022, saying that his father was "a white supremacist and a neo-Nazi" who would call him "an F-word that is very derogatory to the gay community".

[9][21] Spacey had tried to succeed as a comedian for several years before attending the Juilliard School in New York City, as a member of Group 12, where he studied drama with teacher Marian Seldes[22] between 1979 and 1981.

[24] The following year, he made his first Broadway appearance, as Oswald in a production of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts, starring Liv Ullmann and director John Neville, which opened at the Eisenhower Theater in Washington's Kennedy Center.

[27] Spacey's prominence as a stage actor began in 1986, when he was cast opposite Jack Lemmon, Peter Gallagher, and Bethel Leslie, as Jamie, the eldest Tyrone son, in Jonathan Miller's lauded production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night.

[33] In the 2005 season, Spacey made his UK Shakespearean debut, to good notices, in the title role of Richard II, directed by Trevor Nunn.

[33] On June 16, 2016, Spacey was awarded an honorary knighthood for his services to theatre, arts education, and international culture in the 2015 Queen's Birthday Honours.

[35] Spacey had previously been awarded the lesser rank of honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to drama in 2010.

[40] Despite an all-star cast (including Matthew Modine and future House of Cards co-star Neve Campbell) and the pedigree of Miller's script, Spacey's decision to lure Altman to the stage proved disastrous: after a fraught rehearsal period, the play opened to a critical panning, and closed after only a few weeks.

For the spring part of the 2007–08 season, Jeff Goldblum and Laura Michelle Kelly joined Spacey as the three characters in David Mamet's 1988 play Speed-the-Plow.

Spacey quickly developed a reputation as a character actor, and was cast in bigger roles, including the malevolent office manager in the ensemble film adaptation of the David Mamet play Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) starring Al Pacino, as well as news reporter Harry Kingsley in a film based on a 1917 dog sled race Iron Will (1994) directed by Charles Haid.

Spacey also played one-half of a bickering Connecticut couple alongside Judy Davis in the dark comedy Christmas film The Ref (1994), and a malicious Hollywood studio boss in the satire Swimming with Sharks (1995).

Spacey gained prominence for his role as the enigmatic criminal Verbal Kint in Bryan Singer's neo-noir film The Usual Suspects (1995).

His work in Seven, The Usual Suspects and Outbreak earned him Best Supporting Actor honors at the 1995 Society of Texas Film Critics Awards.

[46][47] Spacey played an egomaniacal district attorney in A Time to Kill (1996) and founded Trigger Street Productions in 1997 with the purpose of producing and developing entertainment across various media.

In the film he played the role of Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father and advertising executive who becomes attracted to his teenage daughter's best friend.

[53] Spacey played a physically and emotionally scarred grade school teacher in Pay It Forward (2000), a patient in a mental institution who may or may not be an alien in K-Pax (2001), and singer Bobby Darin in Beyond the Sea (2004).

The latter was a lifelong dream project for Spacey, who took on co-writing, directing, co-producing and starring duties in the biography/musical about Darin's life, career and relationship with actress Sandra Dee.

[54] In 2006, Spacey played Lex Luthor in the Bryan Singer superhero film Superman Returns starring Brandon Routh.

[57] In 2011, Spacey starred in J.C. Chandor's financial thriller Margin Call alongside Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quinto, Demi Moore, and Stanley Tucci.

[80][81] In May 2021, it was announced that he had been cast in a supporting role as a police detective in the crime drama film The Man Who Drew God, directed by and starring Franco Nero, which is about a blind artist who is wrongly accused of sexually abusing a child.

[86] On November 3, 2022, Variety reported that Spacey was set to speak at the National Museum of Cinema and was going to receive a lifetime achievement award on January 16, 2023, despite the allegations against him.

[87] On November 28, 2022, after winning a sexual battery lawsuit against him filed by Anthony Rapp, Spacey was cast in the British indie thriller Control.

[88] In 2022, Spacey was cast as the late Croatian leader Franjo Tuđman in the political drama Once Upon a Time in Croatia, directed by Jakov Sedlar.

The film was written by Danny Strong and directed by Jay Roach and starred Bob Balaban, Laura Dern, John Hurt, Denis Leary, and Tom Wilkinson.

[45] On The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Spacey admitted to using his vocal skills as a young actor in New York City to pretend to be Carson's son to obtain free theatre tickets and to enter Studio 54.

[98] On March 18, 2011, it was announced that Spacey was cast as Frank Underwood in the Netflix series House of Cards, adapted from a 1990 BBC political drama of the same name.

In 2002, he and fellow actor Chris Tucker accompanied Bill Clinton on a trip throughout several African countries to promote AIDS awareness on the continent.

[135] In the following weeks, other accusers came forward, including actor Roberto Cavazos, filmmaker Tony Montana, Richard Dreyfuss's son Harry, and at least eight people who worked on House of Cards.

[136][137][138] In the wake of these claims, Netflix cut ties with Spacey, shelving his biopic of Gore Vidal and removing him from the last season of House of Cards.