An aspiring actor broke down in tears while describing the moment he woke up at Kevin Spacey’s London apartment to find the Hollywood star performing a sex act on him, a court heard.
Spacey, 63, is accused of sexually assaulting the man after inviting him to his home, before allegedly forcing him into sexual activity after he “conked out” on the sofa.
In his police interview, the man said he realised Spacey was making a sexual advance but did not want to leave for fear of damaging his fledgling acting career.
“I felt quite vulnerable”, he said, saying he was “starstruck” and aware of Spacey’s “power within the theatre world”.
“You don’t want to annoy someone that powerful, that high up in the business you are trying to break into”, he said. “The social sway he had was massive.
“If he said someone wasn’t going to work, I imagine they wouldn’t work.
“I couldn’t go ‘f*** you mate, that was a weird hug’ and walk out.”
Turning to the alleged incident, the man broke down crying and said: “I felt so devastated.”
The man said he wrote to Spacey as a young actor to ask for career tips, and unexpectedly got a call from the star inviting him to meet outside Waterloo Station.
He said he, Spacey, and the movie star’s dog took a late-night walk around London before arriving at Spacey’s home.
“We were outside his flat, he said ‘this is my place, do you want to come up?’”, said the man.
“I said yes, of course, because it’s Kevin Spacey.”
He said they shared left-over pizza, beer, and a cannabis joint in the apartment, before Spacey allegedly “opened up his arms” and leaned in for a hug, saying: “Come here”.
“I didn’t”, said the man. “I didn’t know him well enough to be hugging on a sofa.”
However he said Spacey put his head down to “nuzzle” him, telling police: “He was rubbing his face into my crotch. I thought this is incredibly weird.”
He added: “In hindsight, it was just quite tactical. He had one thing he wanted to do. Come back, give me a few beers, a bit of weed, nuzzle your head into my crotch and he thought I would put out.”
He recalled seeing the “back of Spacey’s bald patch”, and thinking: “This is so weird, I’m never going to forget this. This is one of the strangest moments of my life.”
The man said he tried to change the dynamic with conversations about Spacey’s Superman film and actors he may know, but he eventually fell asleep on the sofa.
“Four or five hours later I woke up. Light was just breaking through”, he told officers.
“I remember my belt was still together, but my buttons or zip were down.
“He was performing oral sex on me.”
He continued: “I woke to it happening, to which I said ‘no’.
“He stayed so I pushed his shoulder again. He stopped and he asked me to leave straight away.”
He claimed Spacey told him not to say anything about the encounter, and he remembers breaking down crying at a bus stop nearby.
“The next day I felt so awful and I know I didn’t go to work”, he added. “I remember sitting at home all day, feeling very depressed about it all.”
The man said he had got in touch with Spacey by letter, hoping for help with his acting career, calling the actor “inspiring”.
He said he got an unexpected invitation from Spacey to meet for a drink, and called his manner “clinical and quite transactional”.
“There was no fluff around it”, he said. “He didn’t mention anything in the letter at all in any way.
“It made me feel weirdly special - someone going ‘I’m going to carve out time for you this evening, I could fit you in straight away’. I thought I would be getting a calendar out and booking something in four weeks. That would feel a more professional aspect.
“I wasn’t thinking this was sexual, anything more than a professional relationship. But I was so starstruck by it all. I didn’t question the intention of meeting at 11pm. I was just excited about meeting Kevin Spacey and going for a drink.”
The man said when he told friends about planning to meet Spacey, one said to him: “He does like young straight guys”.
He said he “laughed it off” at the time, adding: “I didn’t know at that point he was a predator.”
In cross-examination from Spacey’s barrister Patrick Gibbs KC, the man conceded he had joked about Spacey after the alleged sexual assault.
In one, he wrote about rejections in his acting career and joked about having sex with Spacey to boost his chances.
“The way in which one deals with a trauma can vary greatly, and I wouldn’t be the only person in the room using humour as a defence mechanism”, he said.
“The way I decided to deal with it was to make mockery, a sham, a joke of it, to make it more palatable for me, as opposed to a trauma I have to live through every day.”
The man was also questioned about his contact with Spacey after the alleged incident, as Mr Gibbs showed him phone data suggesting Spacey had sent him a series of texts in the following months.
“I have not seen those messages or read those messages”, he said.
Spacey faces 12 charges of sexual misconduct between 2001 and 2013 against four young men. He denies all the allegations.
He has pleaded not guilty to three counts of indecent assault, seven counts of sexual assault, one count of causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent, and one allegation of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.
Spacey says the allegations against him are the result of half-truths, exaggerations, and “damned lies”.
The trial, at Southwark Crown Court, continues.
