The American actor is in court for the first time today as the trial charging him with sexual assault starts.
ADVERTISEMENTTwo-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey is in London's Southwark Crown Court today, charged with sexually assaulting four men over a period from two decades ago. The 63-year-old actor has pleaded not guilty to a dozen charges including sexual assault, indecent assault, and causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent.
The accusations against the American actor come from a period between 2001 and 2013, roughly lining up with Spacey’s time spent as artistic director of London’s Old Vic Theatre from 2004 to 2015.
Spacey was questioned by British police in 2019 about claims by several men that he had assaulted them. In May 2022 he was charged with five counts against three alleged victims with a further seven charges, all against a fourth man, added that November.
With addresses in both the UK and the US, Spacey has lived free on bail as he awaits this trial. If found guilty, he could face prison time.
Spacey rose to prominence in the '90s starring in successful films such as Glengarry Glen Ross and The Usual Suspects, for which he won his first Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. In 1999 he won a second for Best Actor in American Beauty.
Alongside a successful career in theatre — winning a Tony Award and two Olivier Awards — Spacey has also acted widely in television productions. His performance in ‘ouse of Cards, one of the first shows Netflix self-produced, was widely acclaimed. As the lead Frank Underwood, Spacey received Emmy nominations playing a corrupt politicians until he was dropped from the series following sexual assault allegations in the midst of the growing #MeToo movement in 2017.
Spacey has remained adamant that his career is not over. In the midst of his legal troubles, he has undertaken his first film role for several years in Italian director Franco Nero’s The Man Who Drew God, played the late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman in biopic Once Upon a Time in Croatia and also starred in as-yet unreleased US film Peter Five Eight.
He told Germany’s Zeit magazine in a rare recent interview that the media had turned him into a “monster", adding, “there are people right now who are ready to hire me the moment I am cleared of these charges in London”.
