His trial before a jury at Southwark Crown Court opens Wednesday and is scheduled to last four weeks.
Why is the trial in Britain?
Spacey spent more than a decade in Britain, where he was artistic director of the Old Vic Theatre from 2004 to 2015. He was a high-profile figure in London, starring in productions including William Shakespeare’s Richard III and David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow, and hosting star-studded fundraisers for the 200-year-old venue.
Spacey was questioned by British police in 2019 about claims by several men that he had assaulted them. He was charged in May last year with five counts against three alleged victims. Another seven charges, all against a fourth man, were added in November.
Spacey, who has addresses in Britain and the US, has been free on unconditional bail as he awaited trial.
What’s Spacey’s future?
From the 1990s, Spacey became one of the most celebrated actors of his generation, starring in films including Glengarry Glen Ross and LA Confidential. He won a best supporting actor Academy Award for the 1995 film The Usual Suspects and a lead actor Oscar for the 1999 movie American Beauty.
After allegations emerged in the US amid the growing #MeToo movement, Spacey was fired or removed from projects — most notably House of Cards, the Netflix political thriller where for five seasons he played lead character Frank Underwood, a power-hungry congressman who becomes president. He was cut from the completed film All the Money in the World, and the scenes reshot with Christopher Plummer.
Spacey is adamant that his career is not over. He had 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.
In January he was feted with a lifetime achievement award from Italy’s National Cinema Museum in Turin. He also taught a masterclass and introduced a sold-out screening of American Beauty in what were billed as Spacey’s first speaking engagements in five years.
Spacey saluted organisers for “making a strong defence of artistic achievement” and for having “le palle” — the Italian word for male body parts synonymous with courage – to invite him.
He told Germany’s Zeit magazine in a rare recent interview that the media had turned him into a “monster”. But he said “there are people right now who are ready to hire me the moment I am cleared of these charges in London”.
