Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey has been formally charged with sexual assault and will appear before a court in London later this week, police said on Monday.
Spacey was charged Monday "with four counts of sexual assault against three men. He has also been charged with causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent," London's Metropolitan Police said.
The Metropolitan Police said the 62-year-old actor would appear at Westminster Magistrates Court at 0900 GMT on Thursday.
This June 3, 2019, file photo shows Kevin Spacey at a pretrial hearing in Nantucket.
Steven Senne / AP
The first two alleged assaults took place in London in March 2005 against the same man, who is now in his 40s. The third alleged assault and the charge of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent relate to an incident that took place in August 2008 in London, against a separate man who is now in his 30s. A fourth alleged assault took place against a third man, who is now in his 30s, in Gloucestershire in 2013.
In 2017, after American actor Anthony Rapp alleged that, when he was 14, Spacey had climbed on top of him in a bed, numerous allegations of assault and inappropriate behavior were made against Spacey.
The Old Vic theater in London, where Spacey was the artistic director for 11 years until 2015, said two years after his departure that during its own investigation into his conduct, it received 20 allegations of inappropriate behavior and encouraged 14 of the people who made the allegations to go to the police.
Those allegations covered interactions between 1995 and 2013, all of them dealing with men. The alleged incidents ranged from behavior that made people feel uncomfortable, to "sexually inappropriate" touching, but there were no allegations of rape reported by the theater.
In 2019, prosecutors in Massachusetts dropped a groping case against Spacey, who had faced a felony charge of indecent assault and battery. The district attorney said he was dropping the case "due to the unavailability of the complaining witness."
Spacey was accused of groping a then 18-year-old at a bar three years earlier. The accuser said Spacey bought him several alcoholic drinks and then groped him.
Haley Ott contributed to this report.