Kevin Spacey charged with sexual assault in the U.K.

In a statement from the U.K.’s Crown Prosecution Service, the British government has announced that Kevin Spacey has been charged with four counts of sexual assault and one count of “causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.” This comes from Variety, which says that CPS has been investigating allegations against Spacey for “over a year” and that these charges stem from “a review of the evidence gathered by the Metropolitan Police in its investigation.”

A CNN report says the incidents in question happened in 2005, two in 2008, and one in 2013. CNN also notes that the alleged victim from 2005 is now “in his 40s” and two men allegedly involved in the later incidents are in their 30s.

Unrelated sexual misconduct allegations were raised against Spacey by actor Anthony Rapp from Rent and Star Trek: Discovery in 2017, with him accusing Spacey—publicly, for the first time—of making a sexual advance toward him when Rapp was just 14. Rapp filed a civil suit against Spacey in 2020 that is still ongoing (a co-claimant on that suit was dropped for refusing to reveal his identity). Among other things, he was also later accused of making the set of Netflix’s hit drama House Of Cards “toxic,” including allegedly being “predatory” on set and engaging in “nonconsensual touching and crude comments” toward “young and male” staff members.

He was fired from House Of Cards after that and largely went into hiding, popping up a few times for those bizarre Christmas videos. Last year, Italian director Franco Nero tapped Spacey to return to acting in front of a camera for his low-budget indie film L’uomo Che Disegnò Dio—his first movie since 2018’s enormous flop Billionaire Boys Club (the movie was only released at all out of respect for the cast and crew members). Since then, he also signed on to Michael Zaiko Hall’s Peter Five Eight, which got a trailer recently and features the tagline “The Guilty Always Pay The Price.”