Kevin Spacey Responds After Guy Pearce Claims He ‘Targeted’ Him While Filming ‘L.A. Confidential’

Kevin Spacey is retaliating against Guy Pearce in a video posted on Twitter/X where Spacey tells his one-time co-star to “grow up.” Pearce, currently nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Brutalist, made headlines yesterday when he said on a podcast that Spacey “targeted” him on the set of L.A. Confidential in 1997 and that Spacey’s “handsy” misconduct made him “uncomfortable.”

At the time of filming, Pearce told his then-wife Kate that “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.”

Upon hearing of Anthony Rapp’s sexual assault allegations against Spacey in 2017, Pearce says he “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.”

Today, in a video posted by Spacey to X/Twitter, Spacey says, “We worked together a long time ago, if I did something then that upset you, you could’ve reached out to me, we could’ve had that conversation. But instead, you decided to speak to the press, who of course are now coming after me because they’d like to know what my response is to the things that you said. You really want to know what my response is?.. Guy, you need to grow up. You are not a victim.”

Spacey has not worked in Hollywood since being accused by sexual misconduct from several different men, starting with Rapp in 2017. His response back then was to officially come out as gay in an attempt at deflecting the allegations, which prompted “furious backlash.” In 2022, Spacey was declared not guilty of nine sexual misconduct charges. Spacey has denied all the allegations.

Guy Pearce is a current Best Supporting Actor frontrunner at this year’s Oscars for his role as evil industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren in The Brutalist. He will next be seen in Killing Faith, a supernatural thriller starring him and Bill Pullman.