to write into a script that Frank [Underwood, Spacey's character] does a Marlon Brando impression."

Spacey's been fine-tuning this talent since he was a boy, initially motivated by a desire to entertain his mother, who worked as a secretary to support her three children and a chronically unemployed technical writer husband. Spacey was no model kid. He set fire to his older sister's treehouse and got kicked out of a military academy for hurling a tire at another kid's head. But he had a close relationship with his mom that endured until her death in 2003. "Hearing my mother laugh was the greatest sound I've ever heard," he says, "so I learned how to do voices and imitations."

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For his senior year, Spacey wasrecruited to Chatsworth High School, which had a top-tier drama program that included Val Kilmer and Spacey's co-valedictorian, Mare Winningham. He followed with a stint at Los Angeles Valley community college before applying to Juilliard at the suggestion of Kilmer, already a student there. Spacey lasted two years before he decided he wanted to pursue acting as a full-time profession. Supporting himself with odd jobs, he wrote passionate letters to directors and conned his way into cocktail parties to get noticed. His impressions, part of a stand-up act that often incorporated tap dancing, also helped. Writer-producer Dean Devlin, a high school pal of Spacey's, remembers the time he got them into Studio 54 by convincing the bouncer he was Carson's son.

Spacey made his first professional stage appearance in