By BRIAN MELLEY (Associated Press)
LONDON (AP) — Two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey walked right into a London courtroom Wednesday to face trial on prices 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 referred to 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 prices together with sexual assault, indecent assault and inflicting an individual to have interaction in intercourse exercise with out consent. He might face a jail sentence if convicted.
Spacey nodded and smiled at potential jurors as Justice Mark Wall instructed them that they could know Spacey by title or have seen his movies.
More than two dozen entered the courtroom and the primary 14 have been seated with out objection from the prosecution or protection. Thirteen folks have been then excuse.
Spacey stood along with his palms clasped behind his again as 9 males and 5 girls, together with two alternates, have been sworn in as jurors to listen to proof within the case anticipated to final 4 weeks in Southwark Crown Court.
“I do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that I will faithfully try the defendant and give true verdicts according to the evidence,” jurors asserted.
Opening statements are scheduled Friday.
The actor, who’s free on bail, arrived at court docket about two hours earlier than the trial was as a result of begin.
Spacey has mentioned an acquittal within the case might revive a profession that has largely been on ice since sexual misconduct allegations surfaced towards 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 prices involving males now of their 30s or 40s date from 2001 to 2013 — masking many of the decade when he lived in Britain and served as creative director of the Old Vic Theatre till 2015.
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 reduce from the finished movie “All the Money in the World,” and the scenes reshot with Christopher Plummer.
Spacey turned some of the celebrated actors of his technology in Nineteen Nineties, starring in movies together with “Glengarry Glen Ross” and “LA Confidential.” He gained his second Oscar, for finest 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 taking part in the late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman within the 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 have 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 elements synonymous with braveness — to ask him.
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Associated Press author Jill Lawless contributed to this report.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”