Before he hit the A-list, the 55-year-old actor was just trying to make it into a magazine.
Before he hit the A-list, Kevin Spacey was just trying to make it into a teen magazine.
The House of Cards star got a surprise on Monday night when Jimmy Kimmel aired a 1979 NBC News report about Tiger Beat magazine's "Teenage Idol" cattle call, of which Spacey attended.
Dressed like a private investigator -- or as Kimmel says, "like Humphrey Bogart" -- a young Spacey didn't hold back his real goal in life: to become an actor. "I wanna act very badly," he told a reporter.
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Now at age 55, Spacey recalls that he was auditioning for everything at that time in his life. "I auditioned for The Gong Show," the two-time Oscar winner admits. "I got pre-gonged. I didn't get on."
Spacey says he also didn't get into Tiger Beat magazine either. "Little did they know they could have had an exclusive," the actor gloats, "finger shaming" the publication with his Bill Clinton impression. "[The magazine] would probably be around to this day."
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Kimmel quips, "You had your revenge, that's for sure."
Revenge indeed. Spacey's wildly popular political drama House of Cards just recently got renewed for its fourth season on Netflix.