STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL

By Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles

Christmas Eve, 1951. L.A.P.D. Sergeant Jack Vincennes is canoodling his dance partner at a bash for a Dragnet-type show where he moonlights as technical adviser. He is explaining why his small-screen counterpart seems so bland compared with his own colorful persona. "That's because he's the television version," smirks Jack, who pockets additional cash helping a sleazy Hollywood tabloid called Hush-Hush. "America isn't ready for the real me."

Art imitates life. Vincennes, the flashy, morally enigmatic cop in the new film noir L.A. Confidential, is played by renowned character actor Kevin Spacey. But finding out who the real Spacey is can also be a daunting task, especially when you're sitting next to him on a Beverly Hills hotel patio on a blistering summer afternoon. Spacey doesn't look like a movie star; with his soft, nondescript features, scruffy beard stubble and receding hairline, he could pass for the vacationing salesman at the next table. He doesn't talk like a star either--declining to gossip about the movie business and refusing to share the personal secrets that it has become so fashionable for celebrities to reveal. He may relent and discuss his dog Legacy, but definitely not his dates. "Every citizen who lives and respects the Constitution deserves a right to privacy," he says. "It's just a line I never felt comfortable crossing."

And just in case you're thinking you can tell something about the man by the movies he makes, Spacey cautions against looking for clues in the weird, quirky roles he has chosen. "People presume I'm as complex as the characters I play, and I'm not. My job is to interpret what someone else has created." Indeed, during a two-hour conversation, the only moment when a glimpse of the real Spacey emerges is when he begins to bellow at questions about his penchant for playing bad guys. Still, as the actor's current hot status in Hollywood attests, weird can be a good career move.

His breakthrough came in 1995 with the near simultaneous releases of The Usual Suspects, which won him an Oscar for his performance as the wily master criminal Keyser Soze, and Seven, in which he had an unbilled turn as the gruesome serial killer who cuts off Gwyneth Paltrow's head. "Whether a character does good or bad things doesn't interest me," he insists. "It's whether there are ambiguities." Later this year he will appear as the Savannah, Ga., antiques dealer accused of murder in Clint Eastwood's adaptation of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

When Spacey was a guest host on Saturday Night Live, the writers had him croon a Sinatra tune while subtitles quipped, "Kevin Spacey plays psychos...because he really is a psycho." He loved the skit, hated the media's typecasting. "Some of these films explored certain areas of how we treat each other that I find horrific, and that's why I wanted to do them," he says, practically seething. "But I have 16 years of work behind me, so I reject the notion that that's the only way people view me."

A self-described Beavis and Butt-head goofball while growing up, Spacey, 38, moved around California frequently because his father, a technical writer, switched jobs often. Packed off to a military school after setting his sister's tree house on fire, Kevin was booted from the academy when he tossed a tire at a fellow cadet during a boxing match. He finally settled down at 14, when he saw a production of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie at a high school drama festival and caught the acting bug. He joined a drama class and studied alongside other fledgling thespians, including Mare Winningham and Val Kilmer. ("Here's my on-the-record quote about Mr. Spacey," says Kilmer, who has his own reputation for being difficult to get along with. "Have you ever seen All About Eve?")

With money bummed from family friends, Spacey attended the Juilliard School's drama division in Manhattan. He left after two years and began living the actor-gypsy life. He appeared in regional theaters around the country, frequently returning to New York broke and sometimes homeless. Eventually he found work on Broadway, including his 1991 Tony Award-winning role in Neil Simon's Lost in Yonkers. There also came television roles like bad guy Mel Profitt on Wiseguy and small parts in such movies as Heartburn and Working Girl.

But the stage remains his primary passion. "Theater wasn't a stepping-stone to film," he says. "It's a continuing part of my life." After filming the action-tinged drama The Negotiator with Samuel L. Jackson this fall, Spacey will head to London next year for a stretch in The Iceman Cometh. Directors say he often applies theater disciplines to film. "He's like Meryl Streep because they both come at a movie script as if it's a play," says L.A. Confidential director Curtis Hanson. "They make the most out of their lines, while a lot of actors immediately try to change things." Spacey's earnest directorial debut this year, the box-office dud Albino Alligator, even seems like a filmed play since it takes place mostly in one room.

Though Spacey says he is not as cryptic as his characters, his sense of stealth can rival both Soze's and Vincennes'. "He can be quite the bad boy," whispers a former colleague. "I'm very happy in my personal life" is all Spacey will say of his affairs. "I don't fault people for having an interest in me, nor do I try and stop that interest. I just don't participate in it." As the L.A. Confidential tabloid's motto goes, the real Kevin Spacey remains strictly off the record, on the q.t. and very hush-hush.