Kevin Spacey today told a jury he was a ‘big flirt’ as he admitted touching one of his alleged victims but insisted it was in a ‘gentle, romantic’ way.
The Oscar-winning actor, 63, is accused of ‘aggressively’ grabbing the man’s crotch while he drove him to a showbiz party in the early 2000s.
Describing one of his alleged victims, he told Southwark Crown Court: ‘He was a lads’ lad, he was funny and charming and flirtatious.’
He added that he touched the man in ‘romantic’ and ‘intimate’ ways, telling the court: ‘I’m a big flirt.’
Spacey said he and the man did not take things further because the alleged victim ‘made it clear that he did not want to go any further and that happens at times, and you just respect how far someone wants to go’.
A court sketch by Elizabeth Cook of Kevin Spacey giving evidence at Southwark Crown Court today
Spacey – seen arriving at Southwark Crown Court in London this morning – is accused of ‘aggressively’ grabbing the man’s crotch while he drove him to a party in the early 2000s
‘I can’t remember specific conversations we had but I remember the tone, I remember the atmosphere, I remember the laughter,’ he went on. ‘We had a very fun time together.’
The actor accepted that he touched the man but insisted: ‘It did not happen in a violent, aggressive, painful way. It was gentle… and it was, in my mind, romantic.’
Asked if he liked the man, Spacey said: ‘I liked him a great deal. We had a good time together. We laughed a lot.’
Spacey described his relationship with the alleged victim as ‘somewhat intimate’.
He told jurors: ‘We talked about a lot of things, it was very relaxed with him – somewhat intimate. We enjoyed each other’s company.’
Spacey told jurors he had made efforts to find out where he was at the time alleged offences took place.
He said: ‘I happen to keep everything, so I have a storage facility in Baltimore and a storage unit in London, and I started to go back and look through boxes and boxes and boxes of where I was, contracts between myself, my publicists and photographers, to look at dates to try to be able to say where I was and what time.’
The actor also said he had googled himself to check where he was at certain times.
The two-time Oscar winner told the court he was ‘clearly the dumbest man in England’ because he was ‘still renting a phone’ while staying in the UK.
He said he was able to retrieve phone records from back to the early 2000s after his business partner was told the records went ‘all the way back’.
Spacey told jurors he had made efforts to find out where he was at the time alleged offences took place
Earlier, the actor told the jury about his childhood and how he became an actor.
The court heard he was born in South Orange, New Jersey, in the US to a mother who was a private secretary and a father who worked in the aircraft industry.
He named a number of schools he went to, including one which fellow actor Val Kilmer attended.
He described how he ‘loved’ his first experience of acting in drama class in his ‘eighth grade’ and how he went on to attend The Juilliard School of Drama in New York after school.
The court heard he got his first job in New York in ‘a very small series of parts in Shakespeare in the Park’.
Spacey told jurors that he considered his appearance in 1992 movie Glengarry Glen Ross to be his first significant film role.
He told the court that his mother ‘considered herself an Anglophile’ and he first visited the UK as a child.
Speaking about the first time he came to London as an actor, he told the jury he had stayed for several months in 1986 for a production of Long Day’s Journey at the Haymarket Theatre.
He said fellow actor Richard Harris put him up in his son’s apartment while he stayed in the UK.
Spacey said he became involved in the Old Vic theatre in London after finding there ‘was something quite unique’ about it.
The court heard that the theatre had ‘fallen into disrepair’ around the early 2000s but there was a movement to ‘revitalise’ it.
Spacey said: ‘I was crazy enough at some point to throw my hat in the ring as a possible candidate.’
He was artistic director of the Old Vic until 2015.
This morning, Spacey told the jury about his childhood and how he became an actor
He added that the same year he was ‘given an opportunity to do a television series that was going to shoot in the US that was called House Of Cards’.
The defendant, standing trial under his full name Kevin Spacey Fowler, was labelled a ‘sexual bully’ when proceedings began last month.
He denies charges including sexual assault and indecent assault, which are alleged to have been committed between 2001 and 2013.
Over the course of the trial at Southwark Crown Court, each of Spacey’s accusers have given evidence – variously describing him as a ‘vile sexual predator’, ‘slippery’ and ‘atrocious, despicable, disgusting’.
Jurors were told of alleged ‘aggressive’ crotch grabs against three men, while a fourth complainant accused Spacey of having drugged him and performing a sex act on him while he was asleep.
Under questioning from Spacey’s lawyer, Patrick Gibbs KC, the men all denied either seeking financial gain, attempting to further their career or giving false accounts to the jury.
On Wednesday, prosecutor Shauna Ritchie said the defendant had told police he was ‘baffled’ and ‘deeply hurt’ by the claims made by one man and did not recognise two others.
The actor said he may have made a ‘clumsy pass’ at his final alleged victim but denied deliberately attacking him.
Spacey pleaded not guilty in January to three counts of indecent assault, three counts of sexual assault and one count of causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent.
The two-time Academy Award winner also previously denied four further charges of sexual assault and one count of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent.
The trial continues.
