As Kevin Spacey‘s civil sexual assault trial enters its third week, the award-winning actor took the stand on Monday. Spacey, who is being sued by Anthony Rapp for $40 million, denied abusing the Broadway star decades ago and spoke about his “complicated family dynamic” as part of his own defense. Spacey’s testimony came after a big win earlier in court.
Rapp testified last week and claimed Spacey made aggressive sexual advances towards him in 1986 when he was 14 years old. Spacey, age 26 at the time, allegedly invited Rapp to his Manhattan home where he threw Rapp on his bed before lying on top of the actor.
“They are not true,” Spacey declared on Monday of the allegations.
Rapp, best known for his role in Star Trek: Discovery, publicly accused Spacey of sexual misconduct in 2017. The allegation prompted a bizarre apology from the House of Cards star — “If I did behave as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior” — in which he came out as gay. While Spacey was on the stand, his attorney asked why he was private about his personal life over his lengthy career.
“I work in a very complicated family dynamic,” Spacey replied, according to Vulture. “My father was unemployed a great deal at the time so, therefore, he was home a lot of the time.”
Spacey told jurors their family moved a lot and that his dad “fell into” disturbing ideas.
“My father was a white supremacist and a neo-Nazi,” Spacey added. “It meant that my siblings and I had to listen to my father lecturing us for hours and hours and hours about his beliefs and his ideas.”
Spacey declared that’s how his “hatred of bigotry and intolerance began.” The actor said he was unable to have his Jewish friend over to his house.
“Everything about what was happening in that house was something I felt I had to keep to myself and keep private and never, ever talk about to anybody,” Spacey said, noting how he has “never talked about these things publicly.”
Spacey said his father would “yell at me about the idea that I might be gay” because he liked theater.
“My father would scream at me, ‘Don’t be a —.’ He would use an F-word that is very derogatory to the gay community. I won’t say it in court. As I continued in my life, I think I just — I had a degree of shame, because I wanted people to remember the characters that I played and not know too much about me,” the Oscar-winning actor added.
Earlier on Monday, part of Rapp’s case was dismissed, giving Spacey’s defense team a momentum boost ahead of his testimony. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan threw out Rapp’s claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress. However, the judge ruled the trial can proceed with assault and battery claims levied by Rapp.
Spacey has been accused of sexual assault and/or misconduct by dozens of men since the #MeToo movement in 2017. In a similar trial in the U.K., the actor pled not guilty to five sexual assault charges.
MORE: Kevin Spacey wins partial dismissal of Anthony Rapp claim
