Kevin Spacey Re-Emerges for Bizarre Poetry Reading

Ryan Lattanzio

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Kevin Spacey has once again emerged under puzzling circumstances. The embattled former “House of Cards” star and Oscar winner, who fell from grace in 2017 after sexual assault allegations against the “American Beauty” actor surfaced, made a strange public appearance in Rome over the weekend. Spacey surprised museum-goers when he set up shop at the Palazzo Massimo to perform a public poetry reading.

The poem, “The Boxer” by Gabriele Tinti, centers on a dejected fighter who bemoans his cruel fate while bleeding out by the ringside. “The more you’re wounded, the greater you are. And the more empty you are,” recounts Spacey, clad in a burnt-sienna suit, to a nonplussed crowd. This is no doubt yet another autobiographical flourish from the disgraced 60-year-old actor, who resurfaced last October in an unsettling video posing as axed “House of Cards” character Frank Underwood, where he used Underwood’s Shakespearean oratory to denounce the sexual assault claims that began with “Star Trek: Discovery” actor Anthony Rapp. (TMZ has the video of his latest public appearance here.)

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Despite numerous allegations coming out of the woodwork from his former cohorts at the Old Vic Theatre in London, where Spacey once reigned as Artistic Director, the two-time Academy Award winner had a major personal coup earlier this summer. Prosecutors shuttered a case involving an 18-year-old accusing Spacey of groping him at a bar in Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Perennial Facebook poster and “Taxi Driver” screenwriter Paul Schrader weighed in on the video. “Render onto Caesar what is Caesar’s. Render unto Apollo what is Apollo’s,” he wrote. “Why have we returned to the place where we punish artists for their morals? Crime yes, morals no!” Schrader seems to be suggesting we separate the art and the artist from his personal life, but that’s a tough proposition for much of Hollywood. In fall 2017, Sony excised Spacey entirely from their film “All the Money in the World,” with director Ridley Scott swapping Christopher Plummer in Spacey’s place.

There are currently no films or TV series on the docket for Kevin Spacey, save a Gore Vidal Netflix project that will likely never see the light of day. Spacey wrapped production on the film mere weeks before the troubling allegations against him began to emerge.

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