Guy Pearce says that Kevin Spacey “targeted” him while the actors worked together on the set of “L.A. Confidential.”
The Oscar-nominated star of “The Brutalist” was a guest on The Hollywood Reporter’s “Awards Chatter” podcast released Monday, where he choked up while recounting being allegedly pursued by Spacey during filming of the 1997 Academy Award-winning film.
“I was sort of scared of Kevin because he’s quite an aggressive man,” Pearce, 57, said. “He’s extremely charming and brilliant at what he does — really impressive, etc. He holds a room remarkably. But I was young and susceptible, and he targeted me, no question.”
Pearce did not disclose the details or dates of which the alleged encounters occurred. He added that he had a “couple of confrontations with Kevin” that “got ugly” since filming “L.A. Confidential.”
A law firm representing Spacey did not immediately return an NBC News request for comment.
Spacey, 65, has spent the better part of the last decade fighting off allegations of sexual harassment and assault, all of which he has denied.
In 2017, actor Anthony Rapp accused Spacey of sexually assaulting him when Rapp was 14 and Spacey was 26. Rapp sued Spacey in federal civil court in 2020. Spacey was found not liable on all counts.
The disgraced “House of Cards” star and Oscar winner was also accused of groping an 18-year-old at a Massachusetts bar in 2016. Charges were dropped in 2019 after the accuser refused to testify.
Spacey was acquitted again last year after a U.K. jury found him not guilty of sexually assaulting four men while working as the artistic director of London’s Old Vic Theatre. The accusations dated from 2004 to 2013. An additional lawsuit alleging sexual abuse was filed against Spacey and Old Vic Theatre in the U.K. last week.
In the Monday interview, Pearce recalled the moment he first heard about the allegations against Spacey in 2017.
“I was in London working on something, and I heard this and I broke down and sobbed, and I couldn’t stop,” Pearce said. “I think it really dawned on me the impact that had occurred and how I sort of brushed it off and how I had either shelved it or blocked it out or whatever. That was a really incredible wake-up call I suppose.”
Pearce first suggested he had unwanted encounters with Spacey on an Australian talk show in 2018, calling Spacey “a handsy guy.” Shortly afterward, he issued a statement clarifying that he “wasn’t sexually assaulted or molested, I was made to feel uncomfortable.”
The Australian actor said that today he is “more honest about it now,” but still hesitates to call himself a victim.
“Even though I probably was a victim to a degree, I was certainly not a victim by any means to the extent that other people have been to sexual predators,” Pearce said.
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