Kevin Spacey: House of Cards star planning career comeback - NEWS.com.au

In the twist final scene of The Usual Suspects, Keyser Söze — brilliantly played by Kevin Spacey — walks away from justice with a fake limp.

He resumes his normal, even gait, looks sideways at the camera and, kissing off with his fingers, whispers, “And like that, he’s gone”.

Spacey, however, can’t seem to stay away.

In fact, a colleague told The Post, the disgraced actor and accused sexual predator — who is set to be arraigned in a Massachusetts court on Monday on charges of sexual assault against a then-18-year-old restaurant employee — is already plotting his Hollywood comeback.

“He is still getting acting offers from Europe and Russia,” the colleague said. “He’s just assumed he can come back (to American films) in a few years.”

In the meantime, Spacey hasn’t stopped acting.

On Christmas Eve, the actor, 59, posted a bizarre new three-minute video to his official Twitter account.

He appears as his former House of Cards character Frank Underwood — standing in a kitchen, wearing a Santa-patterned apron and saying things like: “(Some people) have just been waiting with bated breath to hear me confess,” and “You wouldn’t rush to judgment without facts, would you?”

It’s unclear how much of it refers to the character, who was killed off the series in the shadow of the multiple accusations against Spacey, and how much reflects the actor’s real-life turmoil. (Among those who have accused Spacey of misconduct are Rent actor Anthony Rapp and filmmaker Tony Montana.)

An old friend of Spacey’s questioned the actor’s state of mind after seeing the video. “It seems he’s flipped,” the friend told The Post. “I’ve never known him to act so irrationally.”

Actress Ellen Barkin, among many others in Hollywood, weighed in on Twitter with her take: “Kevin Spacey is sending a very disturbing message as he chastises his audience … If you hypocrites loved me as a murderer, why won’t you love me as a sex offender?”

In the video, Spacey also sneers, “I know what you want. You want me back … Miss me?”

And maybe people have. The clip so far has received more than nine million views on YouTube — as well as 218,000 “likes” versus 62,000 thumbs down.

At least one industry insider sees a method behind the seeming madness of pulling such a stunt. The upcoming court case, the insider told The Post, will “create a media circus. [Spacey] knows that. Kevin is one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. This was probably some Trump-like attempt at distraction. Throw a firebomb here, and people won’t look there.”

The actor is said to be staying at a $US6 million Baltimore home that belongs to his manager, Evan Lowenstein. The colleague said Spacey is lying low. “Of course Kevin’s depressed,” said the colleague. “But he has a lot of money, he’s been writing.”

And he hasn’t been able to completely resist the allure of the spotlight. Paparazzi regularly camp in front of the hide-out, hoping to snag images of the tarnished star. As seen in a video that surfaced online last week, he has more than accommodated them.

In it, Spacey, wearing a baseball cap that reads “Retired in 2017,” offers pizza to the hungry paps, assuring them he knows they’re just doing their job.

The nice-guy courting “was no accident,” said an agent who has known Spacey for many years. “With Kevin, there are no accidents.”

As for the making of the video, a tipster told The Baltimore Sun that Spacey shot it in Lowenstein’s kitchen.

Sources told The Post they are convinced he used a professional crew. “The production value, the lighting — they’re not amateur,” said the insider.

If true, according to Hollywood crisis-management pro Howard Bragman, the crew did Spacey no favours.

“Actors think they’ve gotten where they are by being clever and charming, when they should really shut the f**k up — and that’s the hardest thing,” he told The Post.

“I saw this video and all I could say was, ‘WTF? What is your point here?’ … I cannot believe that [Spacey’s] criminal lawyer could believe it would help him. And to do it in the Frank Underwood voice? At best, it’s perplexing. I don’t know what his intention was. I don’t think anyone but Kevin knows what he was trying to do.”

This article originally appeared on The New York Post and was reproduced with permission

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