Kevin Spacey was charged in the UK with four counts of sexual assault against three men on Thursday — as he appeared in a Manhattan court to testify in a separate sex assault lawsuit brought against him in New York.
The two-time Oscar winner, 62, has also been hit with a charge of “causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent,” the Crown Prosecution Service said.
The alleged incidents took place in London between March 2005 and August 2008, and one somewhere in western England in April 2013.
The alleged victims are all now in their 30s and 40s.
The UK charges stem from a probe of evidence gathered by the Metropolitan police.
News of the criminal charges were announced as the “American Beauty” star appeared in Manhattan federal court Thursday morning for a hearing in a civil suit against him.
He declined to answer reporters’ questions about the UK case as he left the courthouse, talking on his cell phone.
Spacey was in court Thursday to testify in a civil suit over other allegations of sexual misconduct stemming from actor Anthony Rapp’s allegations that Spacey made sexual advances toward him when Rapp was just 14.
“He picked me up like a groom picks up the bride over the threshold,” Rapp told BuzzFeed News in 2017, noting how the pair had been alone in a bedroom.
“But I don’t, like, squirm away initially, because I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ And then he lays down on top of me. He was trying to seduce me.”
“He was trying to seduce me,” Rapp said. “I don’t know if I would have used that language. But I was aware that he was trying to get with me sexually.”
At the time, Spacey said he was “beyond horrified” by Rapp’s account, and said he did not remember the encounter.
“But if I did behave as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior,” Spacey said.
Thursday’s hearing in New York was largely procedural and focused on venue — whether federal or state court would be proper for the case.
To that end, Spacey was asked questions about where he lived.
The actor testified that he lives in Baltimore, to which he first moved while filming House of Cards. But Spacey also discussed his time living in London, while artistic director of the city’s Old Vic theater from 2004 to 2015.
“It was extremely important to me that I endear myself to the British public, that I’m not running away,” he said after describing a production’s flop early in his tenure there.
But, said Spacey, “I’m an American citizen. Once the job was done, I came back to America.”
He described one additional trip to London, from February to September 2020 during the early days of the pandemic.
The UK charges were mentioned briefly by Rapp’s lawyers during the hearing, and acknowledged by Spacey’s attorneys, who declined to comment further to reporters during a break in the proceedins.
With Post wires
