Kevin Spacey says father being a ‘neo-Nazi’ was reason he didn’t come out as gay

The man suing Spacey had accused him of being a fraud for keeping his sexuality a secret

Kevin Spacey spoke about his “complicated” family upbringing while on the stand at his ongoing sexual abuse trial in New York.

The former House of Cards actor said that his father, Thomas Fowler, was “a white supremacist and a neo-Nazi”, citing this as a reason for why he didn’t come out publicly as gay until he was 58.

Spacey alleged that his father’s bigotry made him feel “shame” about his sexuality, leading him to become private about his personal life. In his testimony, Spacey’s accuser Anthony Rapp had said that Spacey was a fraud for not being openly gay.

“To call someone a fraud is to say someone is living a lie,” Spacey said. “I wasn’t living a lie. I was just reluctant to talk about my personal life.”

Rapp is seeking $40m (£35.2m) in damages against Spacey, who he alleges made a sexual advance on him in his apartment in the 1980s when he was 14 years old.

A judge dismissed Monday one of the legal claims against Spacey.

US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan threw out the claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress after lawyers for Rapp finished their presentation of evidence. Kaplan said elements of the claim duplicate Rapp’s claim that he was a victim of assault and battery.

Kevin Spacey faces a $40m lawsuit (AP)

Spacey’s lawyer argued for dismissal of the case on the grounds that Rapp’s attorneys had failed to prove his claims.

Kaplan said the trial can proceed with assault and battery claims asserted by Rapp, a 50-year-old regular on Star Trek: Discovery on television. He was part of the original Broadway cast of Rent.

Spacey was an Oscar-winning actor popular on the Netflix series House of Cards when claims by Rapp and others in 2017 abruptly derailed his career.

Rapp was performing in Precious Sons on Broadway in 1986 when he met Spacey, then 26.

Rapp testified that he was watching television on a bed in Spacey’s apartment after a party when a fully clothed Spacey entered the room, lifted him up like a groom carries a bride, laid him across the bed and climbed partially on top of him.

Rapp said he wriggled free and briefly went into a bathroom before fleeing the apartment, but not before Spacey followed him to the door and asked if he was sure he wanted to leave.

Previously in court, Rapp said that watching Spacey in the 1999 film American Beauty – in which the actor plays a depressed suburban dad who becomes obsessed with a teenage cheerleader – was “unpleasantly familiar” to his own alleged experiences.

Additional reporting by Associated Press