HOME-GROWN TALENT THRIVES\Valley-rooted Winningham, Spacey soar to Oscar heights.

It was closing night of the Chatsworth High School production of "The Sound of Music." The hills were alive. Maria was ailing.

"I got pretty sick, and dear, cavalier and always-the-gentleman Kevin, he didn't miss a beat, boy," she recalled. "He had that captain's hat out as my own personal porcelain bowl. He was a doll."

Maria, in this case, was Mare Winningham. Capt. von Trapp was Kevin Spacey. And the same determination and talent that enabled the two high-school seniors to get through that trying performance - and be voted the best actor and actress of Chatsworth's class of 1977 - has earned them their first Academy Award nominations two decades later.

"This is Maria," Winningham said when she finally reached Spacey by phone after the Oscar nominations were announced last Tuesday. "Is this Capt. von Trapp? Congratulations!"

Winningham is up for Best Supporting Actress for her work in the film "Georgia," Spacey for Best Supporting Actor in "The Usual Suspects." Not half bad for a couple of San Fernando Valley kids.

To this day, Winningham, an Emmy winner, considers Spacey the bravest actor with whom she's ever worked as a result of that "Sound of Music" effort. Spacey, who has a Tony Award and an Emmy to his credit, still sounds a little in awe of Winningham. And the man who was their high-school drama teacher marvels at the memory of their work almost 20 years ago.

"It was really a privilege to be their director and teacher," said Robert Carrelli, who ran the Chatsworth High drama program for 20 years before moving in 1988 to Taiwan, where he teaches at the Taipei American School. "As soon as the final curtain closed, Mare fainted. ... It didn't throw Kevin at all."

But Spacey, citing it as one of the many lessons he got at Chatsworth, said, "This is what I've learned about theater: If you don't fall into the orchestra pit, the audience will think it's part of the play."

Carrelli had built a risk-taking drama program that was a magnet for area acting talent, and a dominant force on the then-widespread high-school festival competition circuit.

Winningham lived near Granada Hills High but got an opportunity transfer to study theater at Chatsworth. Spacey transferred there his senior year from Canoga Park High. A third would-be 1977 Chatsworth senior, "Batman" star Val Kilmer, who dated Winningham at the time, instead spent his final year of high school at the Hollywood Professional School.

"There was a buzz about Chatsworth and Mr. Carrelli and the kind of work they were doing," said Winningham, who was signed by professional agent Meyer Mishkin out of that star-crossed "Sound of Music" production.

Spacey transferred there as much because of Winningham as Carrelli. The first time he saw her on stage with Kilmer in "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" at a festival in Northridge, as a junior in the fall of 1975, he knew where he belonged.

"These two actors were startling in this play," said Spacey, who ultimately would follow Kilmer to New York's famed Juilliard School. "It was some of the best acting that I had ever seen on a stage, and I remember thinking it would be great to work with them because I was feeling I wasn't quite getting the opportunities that I really wanted at the high school I was at."

The next day, as part of the festival, Spacey got to show his stuff in the Canoga Park production of "All My Sons," and Carrelli went backstage afterward to all but recruit him, suggesting a senior-year transfer.

"The problem," Carrelli said, "was trying to find the right vehicle for Mare's talents. Same thing with Kevin. I've had thousands of students over the years, and a few come along and you say: 'OK. It's inevitable. It's just a matter of time.' That was what it was with them."

The two were so effective they were chosen to speak at their class commencement ceremony. Spacey - who can be seen in "Glengarry Glen Ross," "The Ref," and "Seven" - said this was "particularly amusing to me because I probably shouldn't have graduated since I basically failed basic math. Somehow, I got enough credits to skate by."

Winningham said that "it was known throughout the school that I would perform at anything and everything. It was kind of nauseating, really."

Now a mother of five living in Sonoma, the star of "St. Elmo's Fire" said, "like a lot of teen-agers," she was a little overemotional.

"But," Winningham said, "the drama classes were a great outlet. We were all so close and so willing to go out on the high wire and express ourselves."

Winningham was so determined to be on the cutting edge for her festival competition that, when she and her classmates visited New York, she sneaked a tape recorder into her purse to transcribe scenes from plays such as "Equus" for which scripts were not yet available.

She and Spacey would talk on the phone for hours at night, plotting scenes, trading ideas and discussing their craft.

"We were very serious about this love of ours. We were very committed thespians, if you will," Winningham said, with a self-conscious laugh.

Sounding a bit like Mr. Holland, the fictional music teacher played by Richard Dreyfuss en route to his own Oscar nomination this year, Carrelli said he always considered it important to encourage his students to test their limits.

"Most good teachers are there to inspire kids to do things, to give them opportunities, to utilize their talents and to display their talents and their creativity and their imagination," he said.

"High school years are tough years. But if you've got something that you really feel passionate about, as they did, then it's easier for them to get through school and be happy and successful."

Unfortunately, while Chatsworth High's drama program has continued to thrive, many schools' programs have not. There aren't as many festival competitions, either.

"This, to me, is the shame of what's happened because of the budget cuts, not just in Southern California but all over the country," said Spacey, whose high-school trophies still sit on a shelf with his professional awards. "These programs have been so reduced that now students who are interested in this aren't given the opportunity to grow in this kind of environment. The programs aren't there. They don't have the money."

Spacey paused a moment, as if to consider the odds against all students - of all interests, at all schools.

"This was a place of enormous creativity," he said. "A real blessing."

CAPTION(S):

PHOTO

Photo (1--Cover--Color) HONOR STUDENTS They shared the stage and were voted best actors nearly 20 years ago at Chatsworth High School. Now former classmates and first-time Oscar nominees Kevin Spacey and Mare Winningham have a chance to share the spotlight again - at the Academy Awards (2-3) Graduates of Chatsworth High's class of 1977, Kevin Spacey and Mare Winningham are Oscar nominees for "The Usual Suspects" and "Georgia," respectively. (4) "We were all extraordinarily encouraged to stretch ourselves and try new things," says Kevin Spacey, right, taking aim at fellow Oscar nominee Mare Winningham in a yearbook photograph of the Chatsworth High production of James Kirkwood's play "UTBU." (5) "The drama classes were a great outlet. We were all so close and so willing to go out on the high wire and express ourselves," says Mare Winningham, with guitar, in a period photo as Maria in Chatsworth's production of "The Sound of Music."