Kevin Spacey finishes testifying in civil sexual misconduct trial
(CNN) — Actor Kevin Spacey arrived at a Los Angeles courtroom Thursday as his star was rising in the aftermath of the sexual harassment scandal engulfing the Academy Awards.
But the actor was in a different mood than the one that greeted him when he walked into a Los Angeles Superior Court courtroom six months ago for a civil trial involving three women who accused him of sexual misconduct. After being held back on stage for eight weeks while testifying in his own defense, Spacey left the courthouse before the judge could formally admonish him.
He spent several hours in the parking lot of the courthouse talking to reporters and his friends who were waiting outside. As he walked out, he spoke briefly to a group of his fellow actors before leaving the building.
“I will be back tomorrow,” Spacey said before disappearing into the chaos of the Los Angeles streets.
After the civil trial ended, the actor was hit with a wave of media attention. In the days after the scandal broke he appeared on television shows such as CNN’s “The Lead,” ABC’s “The View,” “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and on Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect.” A week after the scandal broke, Spacey spoke at Harvard University, where he delivered his first lecture since the scandal broke.
While Spacey was on the lecture circuit, the actor took his personal life into his own hands. In a dramatic scene last week, he walked from a Beverly Hills mansion to a downtown hotel, where he checked into a suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel. He took a shower but refused to answer the door and later showed up unannounced at the door of his longtime girlfriend, actress and model Jessica Barth. Barth has come forward to say that Spacey groped her and made inappropriate sexual advances toward her.
“The power of the #MeToo movement is changing the rules,” said Spacey, who is now preparing to make his directorial debut with the feature film “The Death of Versailles,” which centers on his character.
“We are coming to terms with our power not to be men in a system that expects men to behave in certain ways that we find demeaning. I’m no longer in that position, but it took a whole lot of people stepping up.