Kevin Spacey faces intercourse assault trial in London on allegations over a decade previous

LONDON (AP) — Two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey walked right into a London courtroom Wednesday to face trial on fees of sexually assaulting 4 males so long as 20 years in the past.

The actor was wearing a darkish blue go well with, gentle blue shirt and pink tie as he was known as by his full title and requested if he was Kevin Spacey Fowler.

“I am,” he mentioned as he stood behind a window within the dock.

Spacey, 63, has pleaded not responsible to a dozen fees together with sexual assault, indecent assault and inflicting an individual to interact in intercourse exercise with out consent. He might face a jail sentence if convicted.

Spacey has mentioned an acquittal within the case might revive a profession that has largely been on ice since sexual misconduct allegations surfaced in opposition to the star who gained his first Academy Award for supporting actor in “The Usual Suspects” in 1995.

“There are people right now who are ready to hire me the moment I am cleared of these charges in London,” Spacey mentioned in a uncommon interview revealed this month in Germany’s Zeit journal. He mentioned the media had turned him right into a “monster.”

The fees involving males now of their 30s or 40s date from 2001 to 2013 — overlaying a lot of the decade when he lived in Britain and served as inventive director of the Old Vic Theatre till 2015.

Jurors had been to be chosen on the primary day of the trial and opening statements are scheduled Friday.

The actor, who’s free on bail, arrived at London’s Southwark Crown Court about two hours earlier than the trial was resulting from begin.

Spacey‘s downfall got here amid the #MeToo motion within the United States when allegations led to him being written off the Netflix political thriller “House of Cards,” the place he performed lead character Frank Underwood, a ruthless and corrupt congressman who turns into president. He was minimize from the finished movie “All the Money in the World,” and the scenes reshot with Christopher Plummer.

Spacey turned one of the crucial celebrated actors of his era in Nineties, starring in movies together with “Glengarry Glen Ross” and “LA Confidential.” He gained his second Oscar, for greatest actor, within the 1999 film “American Beauty.”

Spacey lately had his first movie roles in a number of years, showing in 2022 in Italian director Franco Nero’s “The Man Who Drew God,” and enjoying the late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman in biopic “Once Upon a Time in Croatia.” He additionally stars within the unreleased U.S. movie “Peter Five Eight.”

Italy’s National Cinema Museum in Turin gave him its lifetime achievement award in January. He additionally taught a masterclass and launched a sold-out screening of “American Beauty” in what had been billed as Spacey’s first talking engagements in 5 years.

Spacey saluted organizers for “making a strong defense of artistic achievement” and for having “le palle” — the Italian phrase for male physique components synonymous with braveness — to ask him.

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