Kevin Spacey thanks “the balls” of Italian museum for new lifetime achievement award
The American actor Kevin Spacey has been given a lifetime achievement award in Italy, despite facing 12 counts of sexual assault in the United Kingdom.
Receiving the award from the National Museum of Cinema in Turin, Italy, Spacey was given the Stella della Mole by Vittorio Sgarbi, undersecretary to the Italian ministry of culture. When handing out the award, Sgarbi stated: “Tonight we’re witnessing Kevin Spacey’s comeback … The one living through cinema is an immortal man, and it is precisely him that we are awarding this prize tonight”.
The disgraced actor was a celebrated name in American cinema at the turn of the new millennium, winning Oscars for his performances in Sam Mendes’ American Beauty and Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects. His last successful movie was the 2017 Edgar Wright action flick Baby Driver, where he played villain Doc alongside an ensemble cast that included Ansel Elgort, Lily James, Jamie Foxx, Jon Hamm and Jon Bernthal.
Spacey honoured the National Museum of Cinema for having “the courage, the balls, to invite me” and praised his manager, Evan Lowenstein, by saying, “It’s thanks to him that I realised I had to take all the setbacks and mistakes I made and get back on my feet, move on”.
Since his first allegations of sexual misconduct in October 2017, Spacey has been discarded by the contemporary film industry, appearing only in the 2018 movie Billionaire Boys Club and the 2022 Italian movie The Man Who Drew God by director Franco Nero. In addition, he has also made a couple of bizarre appearances in short YouTube videos where he plays a strange amalgamation of himself and his House of Cards protagonist Frank Underwood.
Take a look at the video of Spacey receiving his award in Turin, below.
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