Kevin Spacey was hit with a lawsuit from two men who said the disgraced actor sexually assaulted them when they were teens. One of the plaintiffs is actor Anthony Rapp, who first spoke about against Spacey in October 2017, an allegation which snowballed, prompting multiple additional alleged Spacey victims to come forward.

The Guardian reports: “In the lawsuit, filed at the state supreme court in Manhattan, Rapp detailed what he has said publicly about Spacey: that the older actor made a sexual advance to him when Rapp attended a party as a teenager. When Rapp first made the accusation, Spacey issued a statement saying he didn't remember the encounter but apologised. The other plaintiff, who goes by the initials CD, said that he met Spacey as a teenager while taking an acting class, and that Spacey invited him to his apartment on multiple occasions and engaged in sexual acts with him. In the lawsuit, the plaintiff said Spacey attempted to assault him sexually on his final visit.”

Rapp's initial allegation in 2017 prompted an avalanche of similar accusations including filmmaker Tony Montana, who said that Spacey groped him in public in 2003, and the actor Roberto Cavazos.

That was followed by an as yet unnamed man who claimed Spacey raped him at 15, a sexual assault claim from 2017 on the island of Nantucket, and 8 crew members on House of Cards who said they were harassed by Spacey as well as a London bartender who said Spacey flashed him and then tried to shut him up with an expensive watch. Fellow actor Guy Pearce also said Spacey had once been “handsy” with him.

Spacey was subsequently dumped by his agency, CAA, his publicist Polaris, and also by Netflix.

In July 2018, it emerged that London's Metropolitan Police were investigating three new claims of sexual assault by Spacey.

In 2019, Spacey escaped the Nantucket sexual assault charges, which involved the son of Heather Unruh, a former Boston TV anchor. The case was dismissed after the accuser refused to waive his Fifth Amendment rights.

And in September, an anonymous massage therapist whose sexual assault trial terms against Spacey had just been agreed upon, abruptly died.