Actor Kevin Spacey said he’s living out of suitcases and biding time in hopes of someday overcoming a sex scandal that’s sidelined him from Hollywood’s big stage for nearly a decade.
In a lengthy interview published Wednesday in The Telegraph, the 66-year-old Spacey stopped just short of calling himself homeless, but said of his financial situation: “Not great.”
“I’m living in hotels, I’m living in Airbnbs, I’m going where the work is,” said the two-time Oscar winner, who lost his Baltimore home to foreclosure. “I literally have no home, that’s what I’m attempting to explain.”
Spacey spoke to the British broadsheet while singing standards at a nightclub in Cyprus, thousands of miles away from bright Hollywood lights where he was once one of the industry’s biggest names.
The Oscar winner has been persona non grata in Tinseltown since actor Anthony Rapp told Buzzfeed in 2017 that Spacey made a sexual advance on him in 1986. At the time, Spacey would have been 26 and Rapp 14.
A civil jury sided with Spacey over Rapp, but those allegations prompted others to accuse Spacey of improper behavior.
The “American Beauty” actor has admitted to “being too handsy” and “touching someone sexually in a way that I didn’t know at the time they didn’t want.”
In his interview with The Telegraph, Spacey compared himself to writers swept up in the red scare and Hollywood blacklist.
It could take just one ally, such as Kirk Douglas’ embrace of blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo, to get him back on stage, Spacey said.
“When he (Douglas) said, ‘Dalton Trumbo’s name is going on ‘Spartacus,’ everyone around him said, ‘You’re crazy, you’re going to get cancelled,’” Spacey said.
“And Kirk Douglas said, ‘You know what, we get to play the hero in movies, but it’s not that simple in life.’ He was willing to stand up and say enough is enough. The moment he did that, the blacklist was over.”
Spacey was on the critically acclaimed show “House of Cards” when Rapp made his allegations at the height of America’s “Me Too” reckoning.
Spacey was fired from “House of Cards” and has struggled to find high profile work ever since.
Just one VIP phone call could land Spacey back in the limelight, the actor said.
“So, my feeling is if Martin Scorsese or Quentin Tarantino call Evan (Lowenstein, Spacey’s manager) tomorrow, it will be over,” Spacey said. “I will be incredibly honored and delighted when that level of talent picks up the phone.”
Spacey insists that day — and redemption — will come: “And I believe it’s going to happen.”
No criminal or civil court has ever found Spacey guilty or liable of any sexual crimes or misdeeds.
A criminal court in London on July 23, 2023, found Spacey not guilty of allegedly sexually assaulting four men.
A Massachusetts prosecutor, on July 17, 2019, declined to press a case against Spacey after the son of a former Boston news anchor accused him of sexual assault. The case came apart in light of allegations that messages on the accuser’s iPhone might have been deleted.
The Telegraph reported that a fan at Spacey’s show in Cyprus seemed unbothered by allegations against him: “He was acquitted! Isn’t that enough?”
