What was Kevin Spacey before he became famous?

Anjali Rao: Kevin, welcome to Talk Asia. Great to have you on the show.
Kevin Spacey: Thanks.
Anjali Rao: The world does know your movie roles, and you just sort of burst onto the scene, really, with usual suspects, and you got a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for it. Just take me back to that time where you went from a sort of relatively unknown actor to suddenly ridiculously famous.
Kevin Spacey: It was a very gradual transition for me. It may not have felt that way if you were on the outside, but on the inside of it I had been working very successfully as a theater actor for a long time and had made a name for myself in New York theater. Then I started to work in television and began to make a name for myself in television. Now, what I mean is that people started to recognize me. What happened after usual suspects and a number of other films I did, sort of that all came out in a span of about six months, was that I think suddenly people started to connect the dots. Oh, that was that guy from... Oh, he was in that... Oh... And then people start to actually learn your name.
Anjali Rao: But winning a best supporting actor must have been, you know, a great time, but I imagine that winning a Best Actor Oscar would have been amazing. And you did that for American Beauty where you played a depressed suburban dad and husband. Help me revisit that time in your life.
Kevin Spacey: You know, it was a...it’s a remarkable acknowledgement from your peers. I love the industry so much, I have so much respect for so many people that both I’ve had a chance to work with and have yet to have a chance to work with, so that for the members of the Academy to have given me such a recognition was beyond my wildest dreams.
Anjali Rao: Not all of your movies, though, have been so well received. Pay it Forward and Life of David Gale were not, you know, hits at the box office. How do you handle it when a movie that you’ve worked on flops? Does it particularly affect you?
Kevin Spacey: At the end of the day, the only thing that I can really say about movies is that movies aren’t an actor’s medium, and so if people are disappointed in a film, actors are just a color in someone else’s painting. I mean, I can tell you quite honestly, and I think there’s almost any actor who’s been around for a while who could say this with absolute conviction, that sometimes you go and see a movie that you’ve made and you know in your heart you made a better movie than they cut. But you have no authority with which to make that change, no matter how much you might jump up and down and say " You just missed it!" it’s sometimes hard when movies don’t turn out the way you hope, but you always go into them with the best attention.
Anjali Rao: What does a role have to have, theatrical or cinematic, for you to take it on?
Kevin Spacey: Nine times out of ten, I have to really like the story, and I mean the story beyond what the particular part might offer. Sometimes, and this is certainly true. I’ll read a play or a screenplay that will have a fantastic part in a really, really lousy movie. And I think that I want to do movies that are gonna stand the test of time. You can’t always, you know, in the end, choose right, and you can’t always... every movie you do won’t necessarily ignite the public. But I also don’t think that every movie that makes money is necessarily a good film, you know, the barometer of what is good, the barometer of what does last. I think only history can tell us.