By Jill Serjeant and Jonathan Stempel
(Reuters) – Actor Kevin Spacey was sued on Wednesday by actor Anthony Rapp and a second, unnamed person for assault and battery in the 1980s, when both were under the age of 18.
The civil lawsuit was filed in New York State court in Manhattan. Amid the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment by powerful people, Rapp in an October 2017 interview with BuzzFeed accused Spacey of sexual misconduct over the same 1986 incident, saying Spacey had tried to seduce him.
Spacey, who has largely retreated from public life after a starring in films such as “American Beauty” and “The Usual Suspects,” could not immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday.
The actor in 2017 said he did not remember the encounter Rapp described but added, “If I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior.”
