LONDON – British authorities have authorized criminal charges against Kevin Spacey for four counts of sexual assault against three men, the Crown Prosecutor’s Office said in a press release on Thursday.
Rosemary Ainslie, head of the service’s special crimes division, said in a statement that the service had also authorized a charge against Mr. Spacey, 62, of “causing a person to engage in penetrating sexual activity without consent.”
The charges were followed by a review of the evidence gathered by London police. Mr. Spacey cannot be formally charged unless he enters England or Wales, a service spokesman said in a telephone interview. The spokesman declined to comment on whether the service would follow extradition proceedings if this did not happen.
The press release said the charges concerned three whistleblowers. The incidents date back to March 2005, August 2008 and April 2013, he added, at a time when Mr. Spacey was artistic director of the Old Vic Theater in London. All incidents occurred in London, except one in 2013, which occurred in Gloucestershire, England. Metropolitan Police said one of the men was now “about 40” and the other two were already 30, but did not provide his exact age.
The representatives of Mr. Spacey did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The first person to publicly accuse Mr. Spacey’s sexual misconduct was actor Anthony Rapp, who said in 2017 that Mr. Spacey had made unwanted sexual advances towards him in the 1980s, when he was 14 years old.
Shortly afterwards, a former TV presenter appeared to accuse Mr. Spacey for sexually assaulting his son, and then 20 people who worked with Mr. Spacey at the Old Vic Theater in London, where he was artistic director for 11 years, was accused of misconduct.
The theater commissioned an independent investigation, in which Mr. Spacey, and issued a report concluding that “his stardom and condition in Old Vic may have prevented people, especially junior staff or young actors, from hearing that they could speak or raise their hands. to ask for help ”.
The report said the theater had not been able to independently verify the allegations. But some actors and staff did go public. One actor, Roberto Cavazos, wrote on Facebook that he “had a couple of nasty encounters with Spacey that were about to be called harassment” in the theater. “It seems he only needed a man under the age of 30 to make Mr. Spacey feel free to touch us,” Mr. Cavazos.
Old Vic said in a statement that it could not comment on the ongoing criminal proceedings.
In 2018, Mr. Spacey was charged with sexually assaulting the TV presenter’s 18-year-old son in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Prosecutors dropped the case when the prosecutor invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused to continue testifying.
A massage therapist sued Mr. Spacey in California in 2019, accusing him of palpating and trying to kiss him before offering him oral sex during a massage. The plaintiff died unexpectedly before the trial and the case was closed when his estate abandoned the lawsuit.
Mr. Spacey has twice won the Academy. He won the Oscar for Best Actor in 2000 for his work on “American Beauty” and in 1996 won the Best Supporting Actor for “The Usual Suspects.” He was also a prominent theater actor, won a Tony Award in 1991 as a featured actor in “Lost in Yonkers” and hosted the Tony Awards in 2017.
But he had a quick fall in disgrace after the accusations of Mr. Rapp, who has an ongoing lawsuit against him, followed by further charges.
Television and film producers began to withdraw Mr. Spacey of the projects after Mr. Rapp went public and more complaints followed, including the Netflix political drama “House of Cards,” which ended his career without the actor. But more recently, he has found roles in smaller films, such as an Italian feature film and an American thriller.
In January, Croatian newspapers reported that Mr. Spacey was shooting a film in the country in which he played Franjo Tudjman, the former communist general who led Croatia to independence.
This month, Deadline reported that it had signed up for a historical drama called “1242 – Gateway to the West” which will begin filming in Hungary and Mongolia in October. The film tells the story of one of Genghis Khan’s grandchildren. It was sold at the Cannes Film Festival, Deadline added. His new American thriller was also sold in Cannes, according to Rolling Stone.
Alex Marshall reported from London and Julia Jacobs from New York. Susan Beachy contributed to the research.