Speaking recently to a roundtable gathering of journalists in Los Angeles, actor Kevin Spacey talked about his latest, and most unusual, role to date: Prot, a New York mental patient who claims to be a visitor from the planet. "I just fell in love with Prot," says Spacey. "He's placed in the world of this mental institution, and the story is, on some level, about what happens when you encounter a stranger who has some rather extraordinary effect on all the other people around him."

For Spacey, who has tackled such unconventional roles as John Doe in Se7en and Jack Vincennes in L.A. Confidential, not to mention his Oscar-winning turns in The Usual Suspects and American Beauty, Prot presented a specific challenge. To wit: Is he indeed an alien from K-PAX? Or is he in fact a troubled man named Robert Porter, with a dark secret in his past? "I really had to approach the film almost on two separate tracks in order for the ambiguity to work," explains Spacey. "I fully believe in Prot as an alien from K-PAX, and I fully believe in Robert Porter as a human being. And I have two absolutely fully complete stories to make them be able to co-exist so that you can decide which one you think is more credible. It's almost like a mystery, we always viewed it in that way."

The touching but ambiguous story of Prot, and the psychiatrist (played by Jeff Bridges) who tries to unlock his patient's secrets, first intrigued Spacey several years ago. "I first read it three-and-a-half years ago, and I didn¿t know what role they wanted me to look at," he says. "It turned into one of those moments where I did the embarrassing phone call to my manager and said, ¿This script is incredible, the role of Prot is so great,¿ and she said, ¿That¿s not the part, Kevin. They want you to look at the psychiatrist.¿"At that point, the role of Prot was being lined up for Will Smith. "He¿s a wonderful actor," says Spacey, "but for whatever reason it never got made in that incarnation. Then they came back and said, ¿Would you be interested in the role you were first attracted to?¿ and I said, ¿Yes.¿ We went out and got a much better psychiatrist in Jeff Bridges than I would have been. So sometimes it¿s worth the wait."

Among the many unusual aspects to Prot's character is his love for fresh fruit – a love so profound that he eats the entire banana, including peel. "It was always in the script that Prot ate produce that way – he just thought all of it was good and none of it was worth throwing away," Spacey recalls with a laugh. "If you gave him a coconut, he¿d probably eat the whole thing. So when we came to do that day of the shoot, they had crafted fake [banana] peels, and then put a banana inside of it. And it just looked really bad; just to the naked eye, it kind of looked like a gigantic yellow felt marker. And it kind of fell apart, and I said ¿Guys, this isn¿t going to work, why don't you just go to the store and get some nice, ripe bananas and wash them and let¿s just do it.¿ It was an astounding potassium high – you¿re bouncing off the walls. The look on Jeff¿s face [in those scenes] is the real look on Jeff¿s face – he just couldn¿t believe I was doing it."

It's been a busy year for Spacey. In addition to his role in K-PAX (arriving in theaters on Friday, Oct. 26), and his possible attachment to play singer Bobby Darin, Spacey will also be seen in another major release in 2001: the long-anticipated film version of Annie Proulx's novel The Shipping News. "It was an extraordinary experience, and working with Lasse [Hallstrom] was just sublime," he says. "Six years ago, I was playing very cynical, ironic, quick-witted, visceral kinds of characters, and I began to get to a place where I didn¿t want to do that anymore. Then, nobody would have thought of me for The Shipping News – I wouldn't have been able to even find a door to knock on it." He happily reports that he "just saw the film, and it is unlike any other character I¿ve ever played in a film. There is not a cynical, ironic bone in this character¿s body – he¿s just trying to get through the day."