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TURIN, Italy – Actor Kevin Spacey was in the northern Italian city of Turin on Monday to accept a lifetime achievement award, lead a master class and present a screening of the 1999 film “American Beauty.”
The sold-out events have been billed as Spacey’s first speaking engagements since #MeToo-era accusations derailed his budding career. The two-time Academy Award winner lost his starring role on the Netflix series House of Cards and saw other opportunities dry up.
Spacey shot his last film, Franco Nero’s The Man Who Drawn God, in Turin. He is set to receive an award for his contribution to the growth of cinema and be interviewed about his career at the city’s National Museum of Cinema.
Past winners of the Stella della Mole Award include actors Isabella Rossellini and Monica Bellucci, and director Dario Argento.
Spacey is due to face trial in London in June on a dozen charges that allege he sexually assaulted four men between 2001 and 2013, including as artistic director of the city’s Old Vic theater. He has pleaded not guilty.
In October, a federal jury in a New York civil case found that Spacey, 63, had not sexually abused actor Anthony Rapp when both were relatively unknown Broadway actors in 1986 and Rapp was 14 years old. The jury deliberated for just over an hour before deciding that Rapp, now 50, had failed to prove his allegations.
Spacey was previously accused in Massachusetts of groping a man in a bar. Prosecutors later dropped the charges.
A Los Angeles judge in August upheld an arbitrator’s decision to order Spacey to pay the House of Cards creators $30.9 million for violating his contract by sexually harassing crew members.