Why am I thinking of Andy Griffith when I look at these photos of Kevin Spacey? Granted, it’s not the worst comparison to make. Andy Griffith is a cool guy. But Kevin looks like a doddering old fool in this ill-fitting powder blue suit. The color combination isn’t bad though. I would have preferred it in a better-fitting off-white suit with a powder blue shirt, same tie and same belt. That would have looked sharp.

Kevin was in Paris for the opening night of Sam Mendes-directed As You Like It. Ugh, that’s one of my least favorite Shakespeare plays. Of course, I prefer the bloody tragedies. Still, Kevin is part of the effort to “globalize” Shakespeare, and encourage people around the world that these plays transcend any language:

PARIS – Film star Kevin Spacey and his friend the Hollywood director Sam Mendes brought Shakespeare to Paris this week in a global theatre project that the actor said had beaten the financial crisis. Mendes, who won an Oscar for directing Spacey in the 1999 tragi-comedy “American Beauty”, directs “As You Like It” and “The Tempest”, running for a week each in English with French subtitles, at Paris’s Theatre Marigny.

Spacey told AFP the project survived against difficult odds to get the big-budget shows on the road across three continents and hang on to big sponsors despite the financial crisis and widespread recession.

“If you have a good enough idea… I was pretty confident we’d be able to raise the money,” said Spacey, who does not act in the shows but helped produce them.

“We did, just before the credit crunch, and (sponsor) the Bank of America stuck with us,” he said, sipping champagne at the theatre before Wednesday’s Paris premiere of “As You Like It”. “Sam and I were always looking over our shoulders wondering if the phone call was coming (to cancel the funding), but it never did.”

English-language plays are not rare in Paris, but Hollywood figures of such renown have drawn media attention in the cinema-mad country. The shows are the second of three seasons of the Bridge Project, a tour using British and American actors launched by Mendes and Spacey, who is an established force in European theatre as director of London’s Old Vic.

“As You Like It” opened to a packed house with British actor Stephen Dillane stealing the show as the grumpy but wise outsider Jacques. He also plays the vengeful wizard Prospero in “The Tempest”, opening here on April 20.

Spacey insisted that theatre transcends language and cultural barriers. The current shows have played in New York and are also bound for Singapore, Hong Kong, Greece, the Netherlands and London.

“You could say that even people who speak English don’t understand every word that Shakespeare wrote, but you certainly understand the feeling and the emotions,” Spacey told AFP.

“Different audiences will respond in different ways… but at the end of the day it’s just about exposing the human condition and I think it just doesn’t matter where you come from.”

[From Asia One]

Sounds like an interesting project. I love Stephen Dillane too – I only recently got around to watching that HBO John Adams miniseries, and Dillane rocked as Jefferson. Although, just as a historical side note, I don’t really think Jefferson was as apathetic as Dillance made him out to be.

Oh, and Kevin’s “date” last night was Salma Hayek. How do they even know each other?