Bring Kevin Spacey back to the movies

Froma Harrop

It all started with a claim by Anthony Rapp that while attending a party in the home of Kevin Spacey in 1986, the actor got drunk, threw him on a bed and jumped on top of him. Also an actor, Rapp was 14 at the time, and Spacey was 26. Spacey denied that happened.

In the wake of the charges, Spacey’s talent agency and publicist dropped him. The Netflix hit series “House of Cards” fired him. And film projects stopped coming his way. (One indie director took a chance on him this summer.) Spacey complains that all those suits against him and the inability to get work have left him deep in debt.

Rapp waited until he was 50 before launching the civil suit to which he attached a demand for $40 million in damages. The case was dismissed in October 2022 after a jury in a New York federal court found the actor not liable for the battery charges. The jurors needed but an hour to reach their decision.

Spacey’s lawyer suggested that jealousy was the motive for Rapp’s charges. By then Spacey was a megastar, while Rapp’s acting career only limped along. Dozens of other men, with apparently similar resentments, filed harassment and assault charges. They, too, got nowhere in their suits.

Last summer, Spacey was acquitted in a London court of nine counts of sexual misconduct. Nonetheless, New York Magazine opened its reporting on the case by referring to the acquitted as “Disgraced actor Kevin Spacey.”

And The New York Times ran a piece citing charges against Spacey, Louis C.K. and others accused of sexual misconduct with the headline: “Now what do we do with their work?” The possibility that Spacey or the others were innocent of the charges did not seem relevant.

This was 2017. It was the heart of the witch-hunting #MeToo era where many equated charges with guilt. Spacey’s case became a gay version.

What Spacey seemed guilty of was getting drunk and handsy with young men. This may have been creepy behavior, but court after court concluded it did not rise to sexual assault.

A slop-job of a documentary on Netflix, “Spacey Unmasked,” features a parade of male actors with stalled careers. They moan about their betrayal. After having endured Spacey’s roving hands, the actor owed them. What they described at bottom was a willingness to prostitute themselves to some degree in return for career advancement.

One, a former Marine, talks of being afraid of the actor’s physical moves toward him. The guy looked like he could have taken out six Kevin Spaceys.

Another actor complains that Spacey aggressively pressed into him and how shocked he was. A moment later he talks of subsequently accepting Spacey’s invitation to go to the movies.

The film star’s advances may have included hints that he would help these male actors with their careers, and that wasn’t nice. And it’s easy to believe that Spacey was guilty of groping, especially when he got drunk, which seemed to happen a lot. No one here is saying this conduct was acceptable. But inappropriate behavior does not equal assault.

The documentary repeated this line with shocked innocence: “He had dead eyes just looking at me. He was a monster.”

Also, welcome to the world. “Being looked at like an object” is not limited to gender or sexual identity.

Actors who have called for Spacey’s return to Hollywood include Sharon Stone, Liam Neeson and F. Murray Abraham. I’m a non-celebrity who much enjoyed his performances in “LA Confidential,” American Beauty” and “House of Cards.” I miss him.

The courts have freed Spacey of the charges. Now free Spacey to act.

Harrop, who lives inÂ New York City and Providence, Rhode Island, writes for Creators Syndicate:Â fharrop@gmail.com.Â Â