50 interesting facts about Kevin Spacey, classmates with Val Klimer, dropped out of Juilliard School

Kevin Spacey is an Academy Award winning actor who has catapulted into international stardom in the 1990s and now inhabits the character Frank Underwood on the Netflix original series House of Cards.

1. Kevin Spacey Fowler was born on July 26, 1959.

2. He was born in Spacey was born in South Orange, New Jersey.

3. His father was a technical writer and his mother was a secretary.

4. He has Swedish (from his maternal grandfather), English, and Welsh ancestry.

5. The family relocated to Southern California when Spacey was 4.

6. Spacey burnt down his sister's tree house in his younger years which prompted his parents to sent him into a military school.

7. Spacey attended Northridge Military Academy, Canoga Park High School (in tenth and eleventh grades). He was expelled after hitting a classmate with a tire.

8. and then Chatsworth High School in Chatsworth, Los Angeles, where he graduated valedictorian of his class.

9. During their senior year, Kevin played von Trapp and Mare played Maria in a school production of The Sound of Music. Upon hearing of their Oscar nominations in 1996, Winningham sent a telegram to Spacey saying: "Captain von Trapp - congratulations on your nomination - Maria."

10. After graduating high school, Spacey decided he wanted to become a stand-up comedian, even going as far as to unsuccessfully audition for the 1970s TV talent show, The Gong Show.

11. During this time the actor managed to perfect his talent as a mimic, a skill which he manages to demonstrate in plenty of public appearences, such as his Bill Clinton impression during his presenting stint at this year's BAFTA awards.

12. Kevin Spacey received early career advice from Val Kilmer, after he recommended that Spacey follow his footsteps and join the dramatic programme at the Juilliard School in Manhattan.

13. Both Kilmer and Spacey were classmates at Chatsworth High School, though Spacey only completed two years of the four-year Juilliard programme.

14. To pay his way through Juilliard, he worked in Juilliard's admin office.

15. He left Juilliard after two years to join the New York Shakespeare Festival.

16. After he dropped out of Juilliard, he worked as a shoe salesman and a super in his apartment building.

17. Was paid 225 pounds per week for appearing in the play "The Iceman Cometh" at the Almeida Theatre in London (1998).

18. Kevin's brother is a Rod Stewart impersonator. Randy Fowler lives in Boise, Idaho, as a $100-per-night Rod Stewart impersonator and in recent years, has spilled numerous family secrets to the press, particularly accusations that denigrate the brother's father, Thomas Fowler.

19. His guest appearance in Crime Story: The Senator, the Movie Star, and the Mob (1987) was his first major television appearance.

20. Sherlock Holmes got him into acting. During a trip to London when he was 10 years old and after seeing a production of Sherlock Holmes, the actor made a bold decision. "I thought it was incredible, the funniest thing I'd ever seen! That's when I knew what I wanted to do for a living."

21. He landed a role in Working Girl, in which Spacey had a small but memorable role as a sleazy businessman.

22. Owns a production company called TriggerStreet of which name was taken from an actual street in the San Fernando Valley.

23. Considers Al Pacino, Jason Robards, Spencer Tracy, Henry Fonda, James Stewart, and Jack Lemmon as his idols.

24. Was born on the same date and month as Jeremy Piven, Mick Jagger, Stanley Kubrick, Sandra Bullock, and Kate Beckinsale were.

25. He has a Labrador called Legacy.

26. In the mid-1990s, Spacey was catapulted into international stardom with lead performances in the hit movies The Usual Suspects (1995; for which he won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role) and Se7en (1995).

27. Spacey went on to make his directorial debut the following year with Albino Alligator. A New Orleans-based crime drama starring Matt Dillon, Faye Dunaway, and Gary Sinise, the film won some positive reviews, though it made little impact at the box office. In addition to directing, Spacey kept busy with acting, appearing the same year in A Time to Kill and Al Pacino's documentary Looking for Richard.

28. His Oscar-winning performance as Verbal Kint from his film The Usual Suspects (1995) (1995) was ranked #48 on the American Film Institute's Villains list in their compilation of the 100 years of The Greatest Screen Heroes and Villains.

29. The actor went on to star in Clint Eastwood's highly anticipated 1997 adaptation of John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and then had a sizable role in the big-budget The Negotiator in 1998.

30. The same year, he also lent his voice to the computer-animated A Bug's Life.

31. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Lead Role in 1999 for the role of the American Beauty.

32. His mother was his date for the Oscars the night he won.

33. Kevin Spacey dedicated the Oscar that he won for Best Actor in American Beauty (1999) to Jack Lemmon. Spacey has said in interviews that he based his performance of Lester Burnham on Lemmon's C.C. Baxter in The Apartment (1960). Appropriately, there is a family connection between those films: Lemmon's love interest was Shirley MacLaine, whose sister-in-law,Annette Bening played Spacey's wife.

34. The use of the name Spacey, while rumored as a combination of Spencer Tracy's names, is actually his mother's maiden name.

35. 17 April 2004, London - suffered a head injury after tripping over his dog while pursuing a young man who stole his cell phone. Initially, he reported that the injury was the result of a mugging, but later admitted the truth and stated that he was embarrassed by the situation.

36. His father Thomas Fowler died in 1992. His mother Kathleen died of a brain tumor in 2003.

37. Spacey parodied a mad bald man, "Dr. Evil", in Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002) while portraying a sinister bald man, "Lex Luthor", in Superman Returns (2006).

38. As part of his research for the role of Bobby Darin in the film Beyond the Sea (2004), Spacey watched several of Michael Bublé's performances.

39. He is a huge fan of Professional Wrestling.

40. He has a black mongrel terrier called Mini. "She is named after the car.".

41. Kevin Spacey has never been married or had children.

42. He is thanked by the band Matchbox 20 in the liner notes of their album "Yourself or Someone Like You".

43. He divides his time between London, England and Los Angeles, California.

44. He loves to jog and do yoga.

45. He pays it forward and gives back. Kevin Spacey set up his Kevin Spacey Foundation in the UK in 2010 and the US in 2013. It is geared towards nurturing budding actors through workshops, education, grants and scholarships. It's this work that brought him to Sharjah, in partnership with the Middle East Theatre Academy.

46. In 2003, Spacey was appointed artistic director of the Old Vic Theatre in London.

47. In 2013, Spacey became a household name all over again when he landed the role of Congressman Frank Underwood on the Nexflix original drama House of Cards.

48. For his role, he received both Golden Globe and Emmy nominations, and the actor won a Globe award in 2015 for the role.

49. He is a master of impressions: Kevin Spacey is an excellent mimic and can take-off the voices of stars including Michael Caine and Jack Nicholson. "Recently I've loved doing Bill Clinton's voice," he told us. "And he enjoys it when I do it."

50. He's about to play Nixon. Spacey has just wrapped filming his part of Richard Nixon in Liza Johnson's film Elvis & Nixon. The movie, which is still in production, also stars Colin Hanks, Michael Shannon and Tracy Letts.