TURIN, Italy (AP) — Actor Kevin Spacey, who faces a dozen sex offense charges in Britain, was in the northern Italian city of Turin Monday to receive a lifetime achievement award, teach a master class and introduce a screening of the 1999 film “American Beauty.”
The sold-out events were billed as Spacey's first speaking engagements since #MeToo-era allegations derailed his soaring career. The two-time Academy Award winner lost his starring role on the Netflix series “House of Cards” and saw other opportunities dry up.
Spacey filmed his most recent movie, director Franco Nero’s “The Man Who Drew God,” in Turin. He is set to receive an award for contributing to the growth of cinema and to be interviewed about his career at the city's National Museum of Cinema.
Previous winners of the Stella della Mole Award include actors Isabella Rossellini and Monica Bellucci, and director Dario Argento.
Spacey is scheduled to go on trial in London in June on a dozen charges alleging he sexually assaulted four men between 2001 and 2013, including when he was the artistic director at the city's Old Vic theater. He has pleaded not guilty.
In October, a federal jury in a New York civil case found that Spacey, 63, did not sexually abuse actor Anthony Rapp when both were relatively unknown Broadway actors in 1986 and Rapp was 14 years old. The jurors deliberated a little more than an hour before deciding that Rapp, now 50, hadn’t proven his allegations.
Spacey previously faced allegations in Massachusetts that he groped a man at a bar. Prosecutors later dropped the charges.
A judge in Los Angeles in August approved an arbitrator’s decision to order Spacey to pay $30.9 million to the makers of “House of Cards” for violating his contract by sexually harassing crew members.
