HE'S SPACEY ... BUT NOT SPACEY ELUSIVE ACTOR HAS WIT TO TAKE A RISK AND PREVAIL.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

Kevin Spacey has played many difficult roles, and consistently superbly, in what seems to be an ever more-acclaimed career.

A virtuoso explorer of men's darkest impulses, the Chatsworth-raised actor limned some of theater, film and television's most memorable malcontents, and made them all the more so by locating the human poignance beneath their misanthropy.

His criminal masterminds have been indelible (``Wiseguy's'' Mel Profitt, which first won Spacey widespread recognition; ``The Usual Suspects' '' masterfully deceptive Verbal Kint, which earned him a supporting actor Oscar). He's nailed that peculiarly American dysfunctional, the venal businessman, with consummate accuracy and breadth (on stage in the applauded recent revival of Eugene O'Neill's ``The Iceman Cometh,'' in films ranging from ``Glengarry Glen Ross,'' ``Hurlyburly,'' ``Swimming With Sharks'' and ``L.A. Confidential'' to his current release, ``The Big Kahuna'').

And, in his most honored work to date, Spacey did no less than embody the discontents of a generation with the most stringent of angry irony and, amazingly, something like transcendent grace. To give you some idea of how iconic the ``American Beauty'' performance has already become, Spacey made a special appearance in a gag video based on the film that starred no less a personage than President Clinton, which was shown at last month's White House Correspondents' Dinner.

It was no surprise, then, when Spacey won his second Oscar for playing suburban everyschlub Lester Burnham. That was in March, and since then Spacey has taken on yet another, totally different challenge: acting like all of this isn't going to his head.

Of course, he does it persuasively well.

``I've really been told the kindest things,'' Spacey admits in a quiet, humble tone while dutifully petting a little, attention-craving dog. ``But I don't view it from the outside. I'm in the process of trying to do the best work that I can, and I'm just going to continue to try to do that, continue to find challenges that keep it interesting for me.''

``Because, I think, that the longer it's interesting to me, the longer I choose to do things that are challenging and difficult and, even, scare me, the better the work will be. If I start getting a cocky attitude about it and actually believe all the nice comments, then I'll probably be on the rocks in no time.'' ``American Beauty's'' success has already led to expanded opportunities for the 40-year-old actor. He's just completed shooting ``Pay It Forward'' with Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osment, in which he plays an unquestionably good guy for a change: a teacher who, having been severely burned in a fire, assigns his students to perform good deeds and encourage others to do the same.

But the actor viewed befuddled Burnham, despite the confrontational nastiness that places him squarely in Spacey specialtyland, as a giant step away from the shrewd calculator Hollywood had been typecasting him as.

``I met him at exactly the moment when I needed to meet Lester, because I was at my own place of feeling like I was somewhat trapped by an impression, the whole people-like-you-the-way-they-discover-you Line is overdrawn thing in this business,'' he says. ``People wanted me to be the manipulative, evil, creepy guy all the time - or at least I was being assessed in that way, although in actuality I'd only done four movies that would fall into that category. So I felt like I really wanted to break out and do something new, and I felt very fortunate when Sam came along and said he wanted me to do this role.''

Sam is Sam Mendes, the English theatrical wiz who made his own Oscar-winning directing debut with ``American Beauty.''

``It's one thing to have a great actor,'' Mendes notes, ``but it's another thing to have a great actor who's hungry to play a part he's never played before. That was the case with Kevin - he'd always played the clever guy - and here he knew less than everyone else, was a foolish man. I sensed that when he read it, and you could see it when he played it.''

In ``Kahuna,'' Spacey appears to have regressed to obnoxious smart-aleck type. But, as the promotional tagline his last movie made famous goes, look closer.

Spacey plays Larry, the boisterous, overbearing and certainly sharpest of three industrial lubricant salesmen trapped in a hospitality suite at a Wichita, Kan., convention. Phil, an old colleague played by Danny DeVito, is growing weary of the rat race Larry thrives on and wondering about the meaning of his life. A young newcomer, Bob (Peter Facinelli), is shocked by Larry's needling, profane demeanor; Bob is a devout Christian and apparently naive, but he may turn out to be the canniest salesman in the room.

``I think 'Kahuna' was a pretty great examination of what a lot of people can do, which is to hide their own prejudice behind a cloak of religion or politics,'' Spacey says. ``I thought it dealt with that subject quite fairly and dealt with each of the characters fairly.''

``Kahuna'' is the first film from Spacey's Trigger Street Productions company. Based on Roger Rueff's play ``Hospitality Suite'' and directed by one of the actor's longtime theater buddies, Chicago-based stage director John Swanbeck, the movie was shot in a quick 16 days last spring in New York, right after Spacey wrapped ``Beauty'' and while rehearsals were under way for the Broadway ``Iceman'' run.

The $2 million, essentially single-set movie, fortunately, didn't require too much in a producing capacity from the busy actor. He did, however, have to call on those old manipulative, prevaricating tricks he plays so well, when the actor originally scheduled to play Phil dropped out a week before cameras rolled.

``I called Danny in sort of a last-minute panic,'' Spacey admits. ``I did kind of lie to him, though; I said that the role had been written specifically for him.

``He said, 'Really? That's quite an honor. When are you planning on putting this movie together?'

``I said, 'We start shooting next Tuesday.'

``He said, 'Oh yeah? For a role that I've just heard for the first time was written specifically for me? Great; next time I have a part for a lying, conniving bastard, I'll give you a call.' ''

And Spacey will probably do it, if his gratitude for DeVito stepping in is any indication.

``I think Danny gives a rather extraordinary performance, particularly when you know he had about a week of time between when he first heard about the project and we started shooting,'' Spacey says. ``I hope the academy remembers him next year.''

There's that humble, just-a-supportive-member-of-the-ensemble thing again. Asked about his own millennial Oscar chances, Spacey shrugs.

``If I'm sick of me, I can only imagine how other people feel,'' he says. ``So I think I'll probably sit it out next year. I mean, by law of averages, I'm due to get hit by a bus any day now.''

Not likely. Filmmakers are clamoring for Spacey's services like never before - and that's quite a clamor. He's due to star in the long-delayed film version of the best-selling novel ``The Shipping News'' next winter, is working up a romantic comedy with ``Independence Day'' producer (and Chatsworth High pal) Dean Devlin and is furiously denying reports that he'll make a new ``Pink Panther'' comedy - though he hasn't entirely ruled out the possibility.

He also insists that he's not too old to star in a biopic of Bobby Darin, the '60s pop singer who died at the age of 37, for which Spacey plans to do all of his own singing.

``I used to do exclusive musicals when I was a kid,'' he reminds us (one of which was a near-legendary school production of ``The Sound of Music'' opposite classmate-turned-TV-movie-queen Mare Winningham). ``But this will be a whole new and different kind of thing, because you're actually trying to sound like someone else did. As I said, I like a challenge.''

A big challenge these days, as ever, has been maintaining privacy. Spacey has never revealed details of his personal life, which has fueled widespread speculation that he is gay. In an oft-quoted interview with Playboy magazine, he denied that was true, adding that women think ``... it's a challenge. They want to be the one to turn me around. I let them.'' How that played with girlfriend Diane Dryer, who accompanied him to the Oscar ceremonies, remains a mystery, since Spacey declined to discuss any aspect of their relationship.

``I maintain a certain separation between my personal and my professional life, for reasons of the work,'' he says. ``I find it so much easier for an audience to be convinced that you're somebody else for a couple of hours if they know less about you.''

One personal thing Spacey is happy to let the world know about, however, is how his San Fernando Valley youth shaped one of the most distinguished acting careers of our era.

``I'm certainly grateful for the teachers that I had in school because they really just put me on the right road of appreciating the right things,'' he says. ``And I have such great memories of being raised there, and still have great friends who live there. So I have enormous affection for the Valley, and I will always look back on my childhood there with great wealth of memory.''

CAPTION(S):

5 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Kevin Spacey is happy to take on a new role - even if it means just being himself

Danielle Smith/Associated Press

(2) Kevin Spacey, center, with headdress, stars as an obnoxious salesman in ``The Big Kahuna,'' based on the play ``Hospitality Suite.'' This is the first film from Spacey's Trigger Street Productions company.

(3) Spacey won an Oscar for his portrayal of family man Lester Burnham, whose midlife crisis prompts some changes in his typical suburban life in ``American Beauty.''

(4) Danny DeVito, left, starred in ``L.A. Confidential'' with Spacey. The two reteam in the recently released ``The Big Kahuna.''

(5) 'The longer it's interesting to me, the longer I choose to do things that are challenging and difficult and, even, scare me, then the better the work will be.'

Kevin Spacey

on how he views his career