NEW YORK — Kevin Spacey’s alleged teen sex abuse victim was so sickened by the actor’s Oscar-winning performance in “American Beauty” that he never watched his movies again, a Manhattan jury heard Tuesday.
Anthony Rapp said the 1999 film about a middle-aged man infatuated with his teen daughter’s best friend was the last time he could stomach watching Spacey on the big screen.
“He was playing a character where he was sexually involved with a teenager,” Rapp said during his testimony at Manhattan Federal Court. “It felt unpleasantly familiar.”
Rapp is suing Spacey for $40 million for allegedly preying on him in 1986 when he was 14 years old, and Spacey was 26. He claims Spacey pounced on him after a party at the older actor’s Upper West Side apartment, forcing the teen to wriggle out from under him and flee.
Rapp, an actor best known for performing in “Rent” on Broadway, said he tried to bury his trauma after the incident, which included watching Spacey’s films as his star rose.
“I thought that I had to do my best to just get over it and push it aside,” Rapp testified. “As time had gone on, it got harder to do.”
Rapp told jurors that he was similarly triggered to see Spacey face to face at the civil trial. He compared first spotting him in the security line to being “jolted with a cattle prod.”
Rapp, now 50, claims that he was the youngest guest invited to Spacey’s party by several years and spent most of the night watching TV in a bedroom.
The incident occurred, he said, when a drunken Spacey walked into the room at the night’s conclusion and picked him up the way a groom would carry a bride.
Spacey laid him down on the bed, climbed on top of him, and pressed the weight of his body on his chest, Rapp claims.
He said Spacey lay on top of him for 15 to 30 seconds before he wriggled out from under him and ran to the bathroom.
Spacey’s lawyer Jennifer Keller needled Rapp on cross-examination. She sought to poke holes in his timeline, appearing to mock him when inquiring about the minutes between Rapp leaving the bathroom and the apartment.
“I know that you’re an actor on ‘Star Trek,’ but I know you’re not alleging he used a transporter to transport himself to the door?” asked Keller sarcastically.
Keller grilled Rapp about discrepancies between his account and that told by his high school friend John Barrowman in a deposition.
Barrowman was with Rapp when he first met Spacey backstage at a play in 1986, and the actor invited both teens to a nightclub.
Rapp previously testified that he and Barrowman went home after the nightclub, conflicting with Barrowman’s memory of them briefly going back to Spacey’s place.
“You knew you had a problem with your story, correct?” Spacey’s lawyer asked Rapp.
“I don’t dispute his story,” Rapp replied. “I just don’t remember it.”
The “House of Cards” actor’s defense team has argued that Rapp fabricated the allegations because he was jealous of Spacey’s success and resentful he didn’t come out as gay early in his career.
Spacey, 63, claims he has no recollection of the incident. Since late 2017, more than 20 men have accused him of sexual misconduct. The allegations range from rape and sexual assault to groping. He faces criminal charges in the U.K.
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