LONDON (AP) – British prosecutors said on Thursday they had charged actor Kevin Spacey with four counts of sexual assault against three men.
The Crown Prosecutor’s Office said Spacey “has also been charged with causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.”
The alleged incidents took place in London between March 2005 and August 2008, and one in the west of England in April 2013. The alleged victims are now between 30 and 40 years old.
Rosemary Ainslie, head of the service’s Special Crimes Division, said the charges follow a review of evidence gathered by the London Metropolitan Police.
Spacey, a 62-year-old Academy Award double, was questioned by British police in 2019 over the allegations of several men who had assaulted them. The former “House of Cards” star directed London’s Old Vic Theater between 2004 and 2015.
Spacey won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for the 1995 film “The Usual Suspects” and an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for the 1999 film “American Beauty”.
His celebrated career was abruptly interrupted in 2017 when actor Anthony Rapp accused the star of assaulting him at a party in the 1980s, when Rapp was a teenager. Spacey denies the allegations.
UK charges were announced Thursday as Spacey testified in a New York City courtroom in the civil lawsuit filed by Rapp. Spacey did not respond to reporters as he walked out of court talking on his cell phone.
Spacey’s lawyers appeared to be aware of the UK criminal case, briefly mentioning it in court, but also did not comment on the new UK charges when they left the building.
In 2019, Massachusetts prosecutors dismissed another criminal case filed against Spacey, an indecent assault and a battery charge stemming from the alleged palpitations of an 18-year-old man in a Nantucket complex.