Kevin Spacey says he didn’t come out as gay because his dad was a ‘white supremacist and neo-Nazi’
Kevin Spacey has been accused of sexual assault by several men. (Getty Images/Carl Court)
Kevin Spacey has claimed that he didn’t come out publicly as gay because his father was a “white supremacist and neo-Nazi”.
Spacey is currently facing Anthony Rapp, who has accused the actor of sexually assaulting him in 1986 when he was 14 years old, in a $40 million civil lawsuit.
Testifying in a New York court on Monday (17 October), Spacey said that he had a “complicated upbringing”, especially regarding his relationship with his father, Thomas Fowler.
According to Variety, he said: “My father was a white supremacist and a neo-Nazi. I have never talked about these things publicly ever… I grew up in a very complicated family dynamic.”
Spacey said he would never bring friends over, adding: “It was humiliating and terrifying to even consider bringing friends home to my house. I felt I had to keep to myself and keep private everything that happened in that house.”
The former House of Cards actor said that he was “forced to listen” to homophobic, anti-Semitic and racist rants by his father. He claims that when he disclosed that he wanted to become an actor, he father told him: “Don’t be an f-word.”
“I won’t say it here because it’s derogatory,” said Spacey. “I certainly had a degree of shame.”
Previously, Rapp gave evidence at the trial, and described the alleged assault as “incredibly frightening and very alarming and totally antithetical to anything else that I had ever experienced”.
“I was this 14-year-old child, and I had no desire to have any kind of this experience in my life,” he said.
Kevin Spacey faces charges in the UK
Anthony Rapp first made sexual assault allegations against Kevin Spacey in a BuzzFeed News article published in October 2017, during the early days of the #MeToo movement.
In September 2020, Rapp sued Spacey for sexual assault and sexual battery, and the civil trial began on 6 October 2022.
Rapp’s allegations prompted several more alleged victims to come forward, and Spacey was charged in May with four counts of sexual assault against men in the UK.
