Guy Pearce claims he was “targeted” by former co-star Kevin Spacey whilst filming L.A. Confidential in the mid-1990s.
Pearce, who features in Oscars favorite The Brutalist, said on the Awards Chatter podcast that he only realized the extent of his trauma 20 years after the release of the 1997 film. He said he was in London at the time of the #MeToo movement and broke down over his experiences with acting legend Spacey, who has been repeatedly accused of predatory behavior towards young male actors.
Pearce, who previously described Spacey as “handsy” before rowing back slightly, said: “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.”
He said he “brushed off” Spacey’s alleged behavior on set during filming in Los Angeles in 1996. “I did that for five months, and really I was sort of scared of Kevin because he’s quite an aggressive man. 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,” he said.
He added that he only got respite when his co-star in the detective noir, Simon Baker, was on set. He recalled telling his wife: “The only days I feel safe are the days when [Simon Baker] is on set because I’m dumped like a hot potato, and [Kevin] focuses on [Simon] because he was 10 times prettier than I am.”
Pearce’s voice started to waver when he recalled the moment he broke down in 2017, after hearing reports of allegations made by fellow actor Anthony Rapp against Spacey. “I was in London working on something, and I heard [the reports] and I broke down and sobbed, and I couldn’t stop. 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,” he explained.
He said he has since “had a couple of confrontations with Kevin” that “got ugly.”
Spacey, 65, has faced a long list of sexual assault and battery allegations going back decades, which led to the derailing of his career in 2017, when he was dismissed from his starring role in Netflix’s House of Cards. Though the legal battles that followed came out in his favor—including Rapp’s 2020 sexual assault lawsuit, and Spacey’s acquittal on nine assault allegations in a 2022 trial in the U.K.—his career has never recovered.
He has long denied claims of sexual misconduct, but did admit to Piers Morgan last year that he was “too handsy” at times. Spacey’s team did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Pearce’s claims.
