Randy Fowler is a very flamboyant character with the whitest teeth I have ever seen.
He dresses each day in one of his 250 brightly coloured suits, with a statement tie and ruffled blouse and looks the spit of Rod Stewart.
He lives in Boise, Idaho with four patchwork toy cats (after his real ones died) and ‘Trish the Dish’, his partner of 30 years, a former corporate lawyer who, back in the day, was three-times winner of Idaho’s Over-40s Women’s Body Builder title.
Randy is also the big brother of Kevin Spacey – the double Oscar-winning actor who has been accused, charged, tried and now twice exonerated – in courts in the US and, last year, in the UK – for a series of alleged sexual assaults against young men.
Kevin, who changed his surname from Fowler for professional reasons, has always strongly denied any impropriety and, since then, has been charged with no further crimes.
Randy Fowler set up Rod’s Limos, to drive punters around looking just like Rod Stewart. ‘I am not a Rod impersonator, I just look like him,’ he insists
Kevin and his mother Kathleen (seen holding on to each other) were very close, Randy says. Pictured with sister Julia and, right, Randy
But he is still on the hook for damages of $31million (£26million) after being removed from his hit Netflix show, House of Cards, following allegations that he was ‘systematically preying upon, sexually harassing, and groping young men’.
And the allegations of sexual impropriety keep bubbling.
This week, in Channel Four’s Spacey Unmasked, another 10 men publicly accused him of historical sexually predatory behaviour – several were former Marines, hoping to become actors. Others dated back to Spacey’s triumphant tenure as director of the Old Vic Theatre in London between 2003 and 2015.
In response to the documentary, the actor said: ‘I’ve never told someone that if they give me sexual favours, then I will help them out with their career, never’.
Randy pops up in the programme too – in an electric blue frockcoat and gold-rimmed classes – to give a bit of background context to his world-famous brother.
Thanks to Randy, we learn about the ‘monstrous’ Fowler parents. That their mother, Kathleen, was a religious fanatic and their father, Thomas – whom he called ‘the creature’– was a neo-Nazi, homophobic Holocaust denier, who worshipped Hitler, trimmed his own moustache to match Adolf’s, festooned their homes in swastikas and beat his children with a riding crop.
Randy bravely tells of the years of horrific sexual abuse that he suffered at the hands of their father. He also claims that he did everything in his power to protect his little brother but can tell from Kevin’s behaviour that the damage was done anyway.
‘He’s never been honest with himself. He ran away from the truth when he got into acting and he’s been running away from it ever since’.
‘He hides behind his characters because he can’t be himself. He doesn’t even know who Kevin Fowler is.’
It turns out that Randy had an awful lot more to say than there’d been room for in Katherine Haywood’s two-part documentary – ‘I wasn’t in it very much in the end,’ he says, sounding a bit surprised.
So, earlier this week, he and I picked up the conversation by Zoom and he drops brotherly bombshell after bombshell.
He talks about Kevin’s ‘predatory nature’.
Randy says he and his brother haven’t spoken since the death of their mother Kathleen in 2003
The brothers’ mother Kathleen ‘clung to Kevin like a cheap suit,’ Randy says
‘He is totally dead inside. He has no remorse, no feelings. It’s all about self-gratification at any cost. It was so painful to listen to these gentlemen talk about their encounters with my brother,’ he says.
He also tells of Kevin’s close relationship with their mother.
And how Kevin had a bizarre habit of ‘magpie-ing’ entire stories from Randy’s youth and presenting them as his own in interviews, to make him seem more troubled. Very specific tales, such as how he once set fire to their sister’s chicken coop.
‘Those were my stories, my past. Not his!’
But we start at last year’s trial at Southwark Crown Court when, after being found not guilty of sexually assaulting four men in the 20s and 30s, Spacey stood in the dock and wept with relief.
It is no surprise to hear the brothers are not on speaking terms.
‘He dusted me out of his life. He doesn’t even send a Christmas card. We’ve only seen each other five times in the last 45 years,’ says Randy.
Or that relations have been strained for a long time.
Back in 2003 when Randy produced the first draft of his book – then called ‘Brothers split by Secrets’ – about their terrible childhood, he says Kevin and his lawyers flexed their muscles to stop it being published.
‘It was about me, not him, but I wanted him to read it. He had to face the truth.’
Fourteen years later, when the first allegations of sexual impropriety were levelled at Spacey, Randy had another go at it.
‘I sat down and wrote the whole thing in just 49 days – 89,500 words! I was truly divinely inspired.’
This time it was called ‘A Moment In time – Living in the Shadows’ and, again, there is plenty about his famous brother in it.
‘That’s why he hates me. I am the keeper of the truth.’
Randy insists he was not motivated by cash.
Money was short and Randy claims he was often dressed in broken shoes and raggedy shirts – the reason he gives for dressing so flamboyantly today
‘That is bull****! I’ve only sold 500 copies, but I didn’t write the book to make any money. I just want to help people. I’m trying to do God’s work – whichever god we’re talking about. To help others’ call for help.’
But it did lay bare the dark underbelly of the Fowler family and the terrors that went on behind closed doors.
Because while Kevin and their elder sister, Julie Ann, whom Randy has also previously insisted was beaten, did not want it all made public, there seems little doubt Randy had a truly terrible childhood, with violent sexual abuse that he says started when he was nine and continued for a decade.
‘It was crap. Just totally crap,’ he says. ‘And my mother knew but she did not protect me.’
Money was short and Randy claims he was often dressed in broken shoes and raggedy shirts – the reason he gives for dressing so flamboyantly today.
No one was invited to play, so friendships were thin on the ground – but particularly for Kevin.
‘He never really had any friends. So he hung out with me,’ says Randy.
Or, increasingly, their mother.
‘She clung to him all the time, like a cheap suit,’ he says. ‘They were very close. She was bald and wore wigs her entire life – and he started going bald at 17, so they had that in common.
And he says they remained unusually close until Kathleen’s death in 2003.
‘He only sent me an airline ticket so I could come and see her when it was too late,’ he says. ‘And even then, when she was a f***ing vegetable, he wouldn’t let me sit near to her – he kept barging his chair between me and the bed until eventually he had to leave to film that Bobby Darin movie he was in and I could hold her hand.’
When she finally passed, the brothers split the ashes and took half each.
Randy keeps his in a hollow star-shaped box on the coffee table downstairs in his condo. On the back, on a gold plaque, are the words: ‘Everything will be fine.’
But of course, nothing is fine – and the brothers haven’t spoken since Kathleen died.
Perhaps because they’ve had such startlingly different trajectories.
Kevin, as we all know, shot to superstardom via the famous Juilliard School of Performing Arts in New York, to two Oscars for American Beauty and The Usual Suspects, an Emmy for Frank Underwood in House of Cards and his acclaimed directorship of the Old Vic.
He couldn’t really have flown any closer to the sun, made well over $100million dollars, never seemed to find anyone to share it with, but was the toast of Hollywood and London. Until suddenly he wasn’t.
Randy, meanwhile, became an accomplished drummer, studied for two online degrees, kept his abuse locked up deep inside, had more than 40 affairs, made endless bad decisions and was married three times.
‘There was Shelly-Number-One, Shelly-Number-Two and Stephanie – all S’s that stood for ‘shit’,’ he says. ‘But I’m not an alcoholic and I’ve never done drugs… except to get high.’
Eventually, he met Trish and tried a new tactic.
‘I told her everything and she saved me. I went back to Hell and conquered my demons and embraced the truth and now my life is love and joy.’
Love, joy and Rod Stewart, that is. It was 20 years ago, after noticing his uncanny resemblance to Rod – ‘I am not a Rod impersonator, I just look like him,’ he tells me firmly – that he set up Rod’s Limos, in which he drives punters around looking, well, just like Rod.
‘It makes me happy. Rod makes me happy.’
He nearly met him, once.
‘I went to see him in concert and had an invitation to see him backstage.’
But when he got there – dressed like the singer from his American songbook album – Rod had gone.
‘Shame,’ he says. ‘But I posed for some photos and signed some autographs – with a big swirly RF, making the F look a bit like an S. It made me laugh.’
‘Kevin dusted me out of his life. He doesn’t even send a Christmas card. We’ve only seen each other five times in the last 45 years,’ says Randy.
‘Our mother did not protect me, but she put her angel wings around Kevin,’ he says
While Randy insists he has found freedom, love and laughter through embracing his past, Kevin’s refusal to look back drives him mad. But not as mad as his brother’s continued denial that he was ever abused.
Something that Randy does not believe.
Randy refused to ever countenance a family as a result of the abuse he suffered.
‘I would have loved children, but I was so desperately afraid that the gene that makes people predators would be passed on to my child,’ he says.
He doesn’t even give Spacey credit for being a good actor.
‘He can’t act for s***! I am actually the one with the talent in the family – I’m a great musician, but he’s just being himself. What you see on screen is who he is,’ he says. ‘Why do you think that almost every movie he’s ever been in is some type of creepy untrustworthy individual? Just think about it – any time he tried to do a movie that required sensitivity and feelings, they bombed at the Box Office.’
Perhaps the rage comes down to their different treatment by their parents.
As Randy puts it: ‘Kevin was spoiled rotten. He never got spanked. Or raped. And he always had nice clothes. Our mother did not protect me, but she put her angel wings around him.’
Or jealousy.
‘There was a time when I was very jealous, very envious, very angry to sit back and watch the rise of Kevin, while I was struggling emotionally and financially and he could have helped,’ he says. ‘But I am not jealous any more. I’ve not been jealous of him for a long time because now I have love. Something that he will never have.’
Since Spacey’s star came crashing down in 2017, he has been cancelled by Hollywood, dropped or written out of most projects, lost his home, his privacy, a lot of his money, his charitable foundation supporting aspiring actors has closed down and he is a shadow of the great swanking man he once was. Who knows if Sir Elton is even still a close pal.
Could it be, I dare to wonder, that he has paid his penance for whatever he did or did not do? He has, after all, been exonerated not once, but twice, in court.
For once, Randy goes a bit quiet and adds, ‘But I also love my brother, I despise him for what he has done, but I would really like him to admit the truth and reconcile my differences with him.’
Gosh, Randy – surely that ship has sailed. But if, by some miracle, Kevin walked in right now, full of remorse, clutching an olive branch, what would he do?
‘After I’d punched him in the face and he’d got up again, I’d tell him that I have a clean conscience made up of nothing but love and joy.’
