Kevin Spacey trial: Prosecutor calls actor ‘a sexual bully’
LONDON –
Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey gets a kick out of preying on other men, a prosecutor told jurors at his sexual assault trial Friday in a London courtroom.
Spacey is “a man who disrespects personal boundaries or space, a man who seems to take pleasure in making others feel powerless and uncomfortable — a sexual bully,” prosecutor Christine Agnew said in her opening statement. “His preferred method of attack, it seems, is to aggressively grab other men in the crotch.”
The four men who accused Spacey of assault didn’t know each other, but all were “unlucky enough” to get his attention, she said.
Spacey, 63, has pleaded not guilty to a dozen charges, including assault, indecent assault and solicitation of penetrative sexual activity without consent.
Defense attorney Patrick Gibbs said Spacey denied all allegations of nonconsensual activity and told jurors to wonder what — if anything — had happened as they listened to the evidence.
“What’s Reimagined With a Sinister Twist?” Gibbs said. “What’s made up or twisted?”
He said jurors would hear truths, half-truths, deliberate exaggerations and lies.
The charges concern men now in their 30s and 40s and date from 2001 to 2013, covering most of the decade in which Spacey lived in Britain and was Artistic Director of the Old Vic Theater until 2015.
The charges include seven charges against one man and five charges against three others. Several of the charges relate to multiple occasions where he allegedly indecently or sexually assaulted an alleged victim.
The allegations allege that the acts were not consensual and that Spacey did not “reasonably believe” the men had consented.
The two-time Academy Award winner arrived at court more than two hours early by taxi. He wore glasses and was dressed in a light gray suit, white shirt and gold tie. Spacey entered the courtroom with a large folder of documents under his arm. After sitting down behind his lawyer, he took a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket and began flipping through the pages.
When the judge took the bench, Spacey went to the wharf, where he sat behind a window in the middle of the packed courtroom. A guard sat in the corner of the room.
The actor is identified in court by his full name, Kevin Spacey Fowler.
A jury of nine men and five women, including two alternates, will decide his fate at the four-week trial at Southwark Crown Court.
“I’m sure the defendant will be pleased to know that many of you know his name or have seen his films,” Judge Mark Wall told potential jurors on Wednesday during the brief selection process.
Spacey is out on bail. He has homes in London and the US
The stakes for Spacey are high. A conviction could send him to prison, while an acquittal could allow a career comeback.
“There are people right now who are ready to hire me once I’m cleared of these charges in London,” Spacey said in an interview published this month in Germany’s Zeit magazine.
Spacey became one of the most celebrated actors of his generation in the 1990s, starring in films such as ‘Glengarry Glen Ross’ and ‘LA Confidential’.
He has won several prominent acting awards for theatre, the silver screen and television. He won an Academy Award for supporting actor in “The Usual Suspects” in 1995 and an Oscar for best actor for the 1999 film “American Beauty”.
Spacey recently had his first movie role in years, appearing in 2022 in Italian director Franco Nero’s “The Man Who Drew God” and playing the late Croatian president Franjo Tudjman in the biopic “Once Upon a Time in Croatia.” He also stars in the unreleased American movie ‘Peter Five Eight’.
