Hollywood actor, Kevin Spacey took the stand in his UK sex-assault trial on Thursday, July 13 claiming he is just “a big flirt” who’s being stabbed in the back by former lovers.
The 63-year-old Academy Award winner recalled his “romantic” and “somewhat sexual” friendship with the first of his four accusers, whom he described as “funny and charming and flirtatious.”
“I liked him greatly. We had a good time together. We laughed a lot,” he told jurors at Southwark Crown Court of the man accusing him of assaulting him up to 12 times.
“I never thought that (the man) I knew would … 20 years later stab me in the back,” he said, adding he is “crushed” by it.
Spacey said he took the lead with the man, telling the court: “I’m a flirt, I’m a big flirt.”
He denied the man’s allegations that he groped him aggressively, maintaining that any contact was consensual.
“It didn’t happen in a violent, aggressive, painful way. It was gentle and it was touching and it was, in my mind, romantic,” he told jurors.
“We never had sex together because he made it clear that he didn’t want to go any further,” he said. “And I respected that.”
He claimed other allegations made “no logical sense,” suggesting they were made by men who regretted getting “intimate” with him.
Spacey, 63, has pleaded not guilty to 12 charges that include sexual and indecent assault counts and one count of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.
The four accusers have alleged that Spacey aggressively groped them and in one case performed oral sex while they were passed out. All the alleged attacks were between 2001 and 2013.
Prosecutor Christine Agnew has called Spacey a “sexual bully” who “delights in making others feel powerless and uncomfortable.
One of the accusers testified that Spacey’s unwanted fondling “wasn’t like a caress … It was like a cobra coming out and getting hold.”
However, the actor’s attorney, Patrick Gibbs, told the jury Thursday that the complainants had reimagined consensual encounters “with a sinister spin” or, in some cases, simply “made up” their accounts.
Spacey could face jail if convicted — but hopes for a career comeback if acquitted.
“There are people right now who are ready to hire me the moment I am cleared of these charges in London,” Spacey told Germany’s Zeit magazine this month.
