It all started with a claim by Anthony Rapp that while at-tending a party in the home of Kevin Spacey in 1986, the actor got drunk, threw him on a bed and jumped on top of him. Also an actor, Rapp was 14 at the time, and Spacey was 26. Spacey denied that happened.
In the wake of the charges, Spacey's talent agency and publicist dropped him. The Netfl ix hit series "House of Cards" fired him. And film projects stopped coming his way.
(One indie director took a chance on him this summer.) Spacey complains that all those suits against him and the inability to get work have left him deep in debt. Rapp waited until he was 50 before launching the civil suit to which he attached a demand for $40 million in damages.
The case was dismissed in October 2022 after a jury in a New York federal court found the actor not liable for the battery charges. The jurors needed but an hour to reach their decision. Spacey's lawyer suggested that jealousy was the motive for Rapp's charges.
By then Spacey was a megastar, while Rapp's acting career only limped along. Dozens of other men, with apparently similar resentments, filed harassment and assault charges. They, too, got nowhere in their suits.
Last summer, Spacey was acquitted in a London court of nine counts of sexual misconduct. Nonetheless, New York Magazine opened its reporting on the case by referring to the acquitted as "Disgraced actor Kevin Spacey." And The New York Times ran a piece citing charges against Spacey, Louis C.
K. and others ac.