The Kevin Spacey Foundation hosted a charity dinner to raise funds for its new theater company, Spacey’s latest initiative to benefit young performers. Guests bid on auction items including a House of Cards set visit and a week in Aruba.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” I keep thinking.
The half-dozen security guards spread across the back lawn of the Mandarin Oriental, a swanky hotel in L’Enfant Plaza overlooking the Potomac River, seem to be thinking the same thing as they eye me over. They’re trying to figure out how this 21-year-old in an ill-fitting suit and borrowed dress shoes fits in at a $10,000-a-table charity dinner hosted by Kevin Spacey. One of them asks me if I’m lost. I consider saying yes.
I’m not lost, however. Out of place? Sure. Surrounded by women wearing pearl necklaces, drinking champagne with men in expensive suits — some of them famous, all of them well-connected — I feel a bit like a kid being allowed to sit at the grown-ups’ table for the first time. But I have an invite. My name is on a list. So I make friends with the waiter who holds the smoked salmon hors d’oeuvres and try to look like I belong.
The gala, held Saturday in Washington, was hosted by The Kevin Spacey Foundation, a charitable organization founded by the actor of the same name with the goal of helping aspiring actors master their craft and start careers. In keeping with the group’s youth-oriented aims, they wanted a student journalist to cover the event along with bigwigs from The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and Politico. I knew someone who knew someone who knew someone, which is how I end up waiting to speak to Kevin Spacey while he takes photos with Kevin McCarthy, a Republican congressman from California and the current House majority whip.
Spacey’s publicist waves me over and tells me I’m up as soon as the actor’s done speaking with the reporter from Politico. I do my best to pretend I don’t mind following that kind of opening act and fumble with the voice recorder application on my phone.
Spacey walks over and we shake hands. He is what Jerry Seinfeld would call a “close talker,” leaning in with the kind of unhurried confidence that comes with being the most famous person in a room full of famous people. He speaks passionately, eloquently and at length about his foundation’s programs.
“It’s not about whether these kids want to go into the arts, because if someone wants to go into the arts, you’re not going to be able to stop them,” Spacey says. “It’s about the programs and the experiences and the teachers and the ideas behind theater and film that can teach a person about their own self-confidence, their ability to collaborate, about standing up in a room and being able to communicate. That’s just good for the world. That’s just good for society.”
The foundation’s programs include sponsoring an acting scholarship for six students a year at Regents University in London, providing grants for between 500 and 2,500 English pounds ($800 to $4,000) and — the initiative being launched at the gala — funding and organizing a Kevin Spacey Foundation theater company.
“I see it all the time when I do workshops, where this little nickel drops and someone discovers something about themselves they didn’t know they had,” Spacey says. “I was one of those kids. When I was 13 years old, Jack Lemmon ran a workshop I was at, and he came up to me afterwards and told me I was terrific and I should be a professional actor.”
Part of the evening’s proceedings are reserved for a Lemmon tribute; he coined the phrase “sending the elevator back down” to the next generation of actors that the foundation hopes to benefit. Chris Lemmon, the actor’s son, is featured at the event, and Spacey busts out a pretty solid Lemmon impression between renditions of crooner standards he performs with a youth jazz orchestra over dinner.
Before the gala moves indoors for dinner — held in a gigantic room bathed in red light that makes it look like something out of a David Lynch movie — I’m introduced to Steve Winter, the foundation’s program director. He tells me about how the foundation started when Spacey was in a Sam Mendes-directed production of Richard III at the Old Vic in London two years ago. During that time, the foundation started holding events called “Richard’s Rampage” in which Winter would workshop scenes from Richard III with young actors.
Although the foundation is looking for corporate sponsorship, events such as this one are its only current source of income. The hotel’s general manager, a friendly guy I had the good fortune of being seated beside at dinner, tells me the hotel underwrites much of the cost in return for an endorsement deal.
The dinner consists of a first course of lobster and avocado salad (yes, lobster is an appetizer here), an entree of steak so juicy it cuts like butter and something called haricot vert followed by a dessert of creme brulee. (In comparison, the previous night I had macaroni pizza.) There are tablets scattered over all the tables that allow guests to sign up for a silent auction. The various prizes range in starting price from $500 (two tickets to a red carpet premiere at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival) to $20,000 (a private performance by Aloe Blacc). Other items include a set visit to House of Cards, a game of tennis with Kevin Spacey, an original Picasso lithograph, a week in Aruba and a three-month internship. (Yes, at least in this case, you have to pay to get an internship.)
The wine flows freely, and the auction appears to be going well. Notable individuals dot the crowd, but — this being Washington, not Hollywood — many have names more famous than their faces. The quiet man sitting across from me who showed up alone turned out to be a congressman. Still, it’s easy to tell the noteworthy from the not — only the former have perfected the art of carrying on a conversation while pretending not to notice they’re being photographed.
Kevin McCarthy leaves early; as if on cue, Steny Hoyer, his Democratic counterpart, shows up a few minutes later. Spacey cracks a joke about his inability to get the two in a room together being the cause of the gridlock on Capitol Hill before letting CNN anchor Ashleigh Banfield take over entertaining the crowd.
It’s about then — before dessert but after Spacey serenaded the crowd with “Pure Imagination” from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory — that I sneak out the back. Even the most glamorous necktie starts to feel constricting after a few hours. On the way out, I remind a couple of people to take a look at my article when it’s published. It’s nice to have someone let you in the room — but you have to know what to do once you get in there.
