The world hasn't heard much from Kevin Spacey lately. The accomplished actor became a social and professional pariah in Hollywood three years ago after an actor named Anthony Rapp came forward with accusations that Spacey made sexual advances toward him when he was only 14-years-old. Spacey would later respond by saying he didn't remember the inappropriate encounter, but he did apologize "for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior." With that, he also came out as gay.
What followed were accusations from more than a dozen other men, all of which Spacey has denied. The actor has been relatively silent, but on Wednesday (May 6), video footage of an interview he did last month began to circulate. In it, Kevin Spacey compared the downturn of his career following the allegations to that of what people are experiencing during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“My world completely changed in the fall of 2017. My job, many of my relationships, my standing in my own industry were all gone in just a matter of hours,” the 60-year-old actor said. “In this instance, I feel as though I can relate to what it feels like to have your world suddenly stop... And so, while we may have found ourselves in similar situations albeit for very different reasons and circumstances, I still feel that some of the emotional struggles are very much the same.”
“And so, I do have empathy for what it feels like to suddenly be told that you can’t go back to work, or that you might lose your job, and it’s a situation you have absolutely no control over,” Spacey added. “When the car finally stops, either through success or through failure, we may have no idea where we are, or even worse, we may have no idea who we are. And that’s exactly what happened to me.”
“I was so busy defining myself by what I did or what I was trying to do that when it all stopped, I had no idea what to do next because all I ever knew was how to act,” he continued. “When my career came to a grinding, screeching halt when I was faced with the uncertainty that I might never be hired as an actor again, I had asked myself a question I’d never asked myself before, which is: If I can’t act, who am I?”
The actor encouraged people to find the silver lining in all circumstances. “As bleak and horrible as things can be and look, as they did for me two years ago, and it might look for you right now, it will get better,” he said. “This is a process that has allowed me to ask other questions I never asked, have conversations I’d never had, delve into issues I've long avoided, face truths I kept hidden and confront traumas I had always denied.” Watch his clip below.
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