The final result of the trial might ship Spacey to jail or revive his profession.
The two-time Academy Award winner was wearing a darkish blue swimsuit, gentle blue shirt and pink tie as he strode confidently into court docket and was known as by his full identify. He was requested if he was Kevin Spacey Fowler.
“I am,” he stated as he stood behind a window within the dock.
Spacey, 63, has pleaded not responsible to a dozen fees together with sexual assault, indecent assault and inflicting an individual to interact in sexual exercise with out consent.
“I am sure the defendant will be gratified to know that many of you will know his name or have seen his films,” Justice Mark Wall stated as Spacey nodded and smiled on the potential jurors lined up between the dock and two dozen journalists taking notes.
The first 14 jurors, together with two alternates, known as by identify have been seated with out objection from the prosecution or defence. The remaining 13 have been excused.
The jurors have been clad in a mixture of business and informal apparel. Two girls wore attire and two males had fits and ties. One man wore a black denim jacket and a bearded man had a weathered Superman T-shirt stretched throughout his midsection.
Spacey stood together with his fingers clasped behind his again as 9 males and 5 girls have been sworn in as jurors to listen to proof within the case anticipated to final 4 weeks in Southwark Crown Court.
“I do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that I will faithfully try the defendant and give true verdicts according to the evidence,” jurors asserted.
Opening statements are scheduled for Friday.
Spacey, who’s free on bail and has houses in London and the US, arrived at court docket by taxi together with his supervisor, Evan Lowenstein, about two hours earlier than the trial was as a consequence of begin. He smiled and waved as he handed photographers and video journalists.
Spacey has stated an acquittal within the case might jump-start a profession that has largely been on ice since sexual misconduct allegations surfaced in opposition to the star who gained his first Academy Award for supporting actor in The Usual Suspects in 1995.
“There are people right now who are ready to hire me the moment I am cleared of these charges in London,” Spacey stated in a uncommon interview revealed this month in Germany’s Zeit journal.
He stated the media had turned him right into a “monster”.
The fees involving males now of their 30s or 40s date from 2001 to 2013 — overlaying a lot of the decade when he lived in Britain and served as creative director of the Old Vic Theatre till 2015.
Spacey’s downfall got here amid the #MeToo motion within the United States when allegations led to him being written off the Netflix political thriller House of Cards, the place he performed the lead character Frank Underwood, a ruthless and corrupt congressman who turns into president.
He was lower from the finished movie All the Money within the World, and the scenes reshot with Christopher Plummer.
Spacey grew to become one of the celebrated actors of his technology within the Nineties, starring in movies together with Glengarry Glen Ross and LA Confidential. He gained his second Oscar, for finest actor, within the 1999 film American Beauty.
Spacey just lately had his first movie position in a number of years, showing in 2022 in Italian director Franco Nero’s The Man Who Drew God, and enjoying the late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman within the biopic Once Upon a Time in Croatia“
He also stars in the unreleased US film Peter Five Eight.
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Italy’s National Cinema Museum in Turin gave him its lifetime achievement award in January. He also taught a masterclass and introduced a sold-out screening of American Beauty, which was billed as Spacey’s first speaking engagement in five years.
Spacey saluted organisers for “making a powerful defence of creative achievement” and for having “le palle” — the Italian word for male body parts synonymous with courage — to invite him.
Source: www.9news.com.au
