Kevin Spacey receives star support as he fights to get his career back

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — Kevin Spacey is pushing back on the “rush to judgment” against him and is being backed by some big names as he seeks to reclaim his acting career.

Sharon Stone and Liam Neeson issued statements of support for Spacey in a story by The Telegraph.

“I can’t wait to see Kevin back at work,” Stone said. “He is a genius. He is so elegant and fun, generous to a fault and knows more about our craft than most of us ever will.”

Neeson said, “Kevin is a good man and a man of character.”

“He’s sensitive, articulate and non-judgmental, with a terrific sense of humour,” Neeson added. “He is also one of our finest artists in the theatre and on camera. Personally speaking, our industry needs him and misses him greatly.”

In the interview with the publication, Spacey talked about the public fallout he experienced after fellow actor Anthony Rapp alleged in 2017 that Spacey had made a sexual advance toward him in 1986, when Rapp was then 14 and Spacey was 26.

As other allegations of abuse followed, Netflix cut ties with Spacey on the series “House of Cards” and his scenes in the Ridley Scott film “All the Money in the World” were re-shot by the late Christopher Plummer.

“My life was finished in four days,” he told The Telegraph.

The timing of the interview comes after the release of “Kevin Spacey Unmasked,” a two-part docuseries that examines Spacey’s career and subsequent fall over the allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior. The project was produced by the UK’s Channel 4 and is streaming on Max and Investigation Discovery. (CNN, Max and Investigation Discovery share a parent company.)

Spacey has denied the allegations he described in a statement on X as “anonymized and non-specific” and criticized Channel 4 for giving him insufficient time to respond.

“I will not sit back and be attacked by a dying network’s one-sided ‘documentary’ about me in their desperate attempt for ratings. There’s a proper channel to handle allegations against me and it’s not Channel 4,” Spacey wrote. “Each time I have been given the time and a proper forum to defend myself, the allegations have failed under scrutiny and I have been exonerated.”

CNN reached out to Channel 4 for comment and received the following statement via email: “Spacey Unmasked is an important film exploring the balance of power and inappropriate behaviour in a work environment, aiming to give a voice to those who have previously been unable to speak out.”

Spacey was cleared of charges of sexual assault in a UK trial tied to allegations ranging from 2004 to 2013, when he served as artistic director at the Old Vic theater in London.

In 2002, a New York jury found him not liable in a civil suit brought against him by Rapp.

Spacey told The Telegraph there has been “incredible progress” made as a result of the #MeToo movement, but believes some who have been accused of wrongdoing are not given the “opportunity to actually have a fair shot at being able to prove that either something didn’t happen or there are circumstances that make it questionable.”

Corporations, he said, “put themselves in a situation where they now had to behave in the same way toward anyone who was accused of anything.”

“If the companies that I had an incredible partnership with had stood up and said, ‘We hear you and we take allegations seriously and we’re going to investigate this. And when we discover what the truth is, we’re going to tell you how we’re going to react.’ But, instead, they publicly divorced themselves from me and said that they would never work with me again before a single question had been asked,” Spacey said. “Certainly, when Netflix did that, and we’d had an enormous success together, people must have thought, ‘Well, they must have the dirt on him.’ So then everyone else decided to react punitively toward me. And all I ever wanted was for people to ask questions and investigate. And I am well aware that that did not happen.”

CNN has reached out to Netflix for comment.

Spacey has won two Academy Awards, for his roles in 1995’s “The Usual Suspects” and 1999’s “American Beauty.” He has two upcoming projects in pre-production, according to IMDb.

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