Actor Michael Pitt charged with sex abuse, assault of ex-girlfriend in New York
Actor Michael Pitt, known for his TV roles on 'Boardwalk Empire' and 'Dawson's Creek,' is accused of sexually assaulting his ex-girlfriend, choking her, and attacking her with a cinder block and a piece of lumber at his New York City home, according to a grand jury indictment.
Pitt, 44, whose lawyers denied the allegations, was arrested Friday on nine counts including first-degree sexual abuse, criminal sexual acts, assault, attempted assault and strangulation. The indictment cites four incidents between April 2020 and August 2021 at Pitt's home in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.
Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez's office declined to comment Wednesday beyond the allegations listed in the indictment.
Pitt's lawyer, Jason Goldman, said he already had exonerating evidence and expected the case to be dismissed.
'Unfortunately, we live in a world where somebody like Mr. Pitt — an accomplished professional who would never so much as contemplate these crimes — can be arrested on the uncorroborated word of an unreliable individual,' Goldman said in a text message to The Associated Press.
He added, 'In reality, this baseless claim is suspiciously raised some four or five years after the alleged incident, from a time when the two parties were in a completely consensual relationship.'
Pitt pleaded not guilty to the charges on Friday and posted $100,000 bail, Goldman said. He is due back in court in Brooklyn on June 17.
The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, which the woman in Pitt's case has not done.
The indictment alleges Pitt forcibly touched his ex-girlfriend sexually in April 2020. In August 2020, the grand jury alleges Pitt forced oral sex on the woman and assaulted her with a 4-inch-by-4-inch (10-centimeter-by-10-centimeter) piece of lumber.
The indictment also says Pitt attacked her with a cinder block twice in June 2021 and choked her in August 2021.
TMZ reported in 2022 that Pitt was arrested in Brooklyn for allegedly punching a man after taking his phone and, two months later, was brought to a hospital under police escort after a public outburst in New York.
Pitt, who grew up in West Orange, New Jersey, played the character Jimmy Darmody for two seasons on HBO's 'Boardwalk Empire,' with the cast led by Steve Buscemi winning Screen Actors Guild Awards in 2011 and 2012 for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a drama series. The show also won a Golden Globe for best drama series in 2011.
His first major role came in the 2001 film 'Hedwig and the Angry Inch.' In 2005, he starred in 'Last Days,' director Gus Van Sant 's film about a fictional rock star inspired by Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. He also played Henry Parker in one season of The WB's 'Dawson's Creek' in 1999-2000.
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BBC News
27 minutes ago
- BBC News
'There was a real gutsiness about them': How the heiresses dubbed the 'dollar princesses' brought US flair to the UK
The rich, glamorous women of the gilded age who married into the English aristocracy faced some challenges – but they were resilient, formidable characters. As TV's The Buccaneers season two begins, and an exhibition in London is devoted to them, we explore the lives of the women who inspired writers and artists. Can the new Duchess of Tintagel steer clear of scandal? Will her fugitive sister, Jinny, keep her baby from the clutches of her husband, the monstrous Lord Seadown? Can Mabel and Honoria's forbidden love flourish? The Buccaneers, Apple TV+'s hit period drama, is back for a second season, and its legions of fans expect answers to all of the above. The show charts the romantic adventures of a group of young American women – two pairs of sisters and their friend – who, looked down upon as nouveau riche by older, grander New York families, come to England in the 1870s and cut a swathe through high society. Fast-moving, fun and visually sumptuous, it looks as though the costume budget alone could dwarf the entire expenditure of lesser shows. It is lavish, colourful escapism – yet the unfinished Edith Wharton novel of 1938 upon which it is based was inspired by a real phenomenon. Between 1870 and 1914, 102 American women – 50 of them from New York – married British peers or the younger sons of peers, and many more married into the upper classes. They were dubbed "dollar princesses" and the popular view was that these were purely transactional marriages – cash for class. The women gained a title and status; the often cash-strapped aristocrats got a welcome injection of money to help them fix the leaking roof of the crumbling family seat. "The decline in landed income during the Great Agricultural Depression, beginning in the 1870s, necessitated numerous male aristocrats to seek marital alliances outside the inner social network of the British aristocracy," explains Maureen Montgomery, a historian and Wharton scholar who is currently editing The Buccaneers for the Oxford University Press's The Complete Works of Edith Wharton. "Another factor was the openness of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, to wealthy businessmen being part of his inner social circle and his penchant for the beautiful and entertaining daughters of the American bourgeois elite who were travelling in ever larger numbers, after the Civil War, to Europe." The first inklings of a novel to be called The Buccaneers appear in Wharton's notebook for 1924-1928. There she set out the plot, revolving around the "conquest of England by American adventurers & adventuresses/families". "In the summer of 1928, during one of her many annual trips to England in her later years, she visited Tintagel in Cornwall and stayed with her close friend Lady Wemyss at her Cotswold estate, Stanway," Montgomery tells the BBC. "Both of these places became significant settings for the novel." However, Montgomery doesn't believe that there is any one particular story or person that the writer drew upon. "Wharton had close friends among the British aristocracy, and went to weekend country house parties. She personally knew a number of titled Americans. She would have been familiar with various scenarios for these marriages, how they were received, the different motives for marrying," she says. Some historians have suggested Consuelo Vanderbilt as one of the possible models for The Buccaneers' Conchita Closson. Considered a great beauty, Consuelo was a "dollar princess" whose father made a fortune in railroads. Her dowry was worth tens of millions in today's money. She was more or less bullied by her mother into marrying Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, and was said to have wept behind her veil at the altar on her wedding day in 1895 (one of nine US heiresses to marry English aristocrats that year). More like this:• The true story of the first ever 'rock star' chef• Age of Innocence: How a US classic defined its era• How history's brutal witch trials resonate now The marriage was deeply unhappy. "Sunny", as the Duke was known, wasted little time in telling her he'd only married her for her money and in order to save Blenheim Palace, the ducal seat. In her memoir, The Glitter and the Gold, Conseulo wrote of a Blenheim Palace butler who had drowned himself: "As one gloomy day succeeded another I began to feel a deep sympathy for him." Her marriage produced two children but both Consuelo and her husband had lovers. Consuelo had been preceded into the aristocracy by the godmother after whom she was named. The Cuban-American heiress Consuelo Yznaga Montagu, another model for Conchita, married George Montagu, Viscount Mandeville, in 1876 and became the Duchess of Manchester when he inherited the title. The profligate duke burned through his wife's money and had numerous affairs. Consuelo, who is mentioned in Wharton's notebook, was reportedly very close to the Prince of Wales. 'Swashbuckling beauties' Both Consuelos feature in Heiress: Sargent's American Portraits, an exhibition of 18 works by John Singer Sargent at Kenwood House on London's Hampstead Heath. The show has been curated by Wendy Monkhouse, English Heritage Senior Curator (South), and is the result of two years' work. "There was a real gutsiness about these heiresses," Monkhouse tells the BBC. "They were brave. They had a hard time entering British society as foreigners, and foreigners of whom everybody was envious and resentful and wanted to take down a peg or two because of this 'buccaneer' trope." They were, supposedly, swashbuckling beauties who leapt aboard the good ship Britannia and, with piratical ruthlessness, bagged themselves a baron or an earl or maybe even a duke. The English newspaper editor WT Stead used the expression "gilded prostitution" when writing about these transatlantic marriages. There was opposition from the US too, at the highest level. President Theodore Roosevelt wrote to his ambassador to the UK Whitelaw Reid in 1906, "I thoroly [sic]… dislike these international marriages… which are based upon the sale of the girl for her money and the purchase of the man for his title." And plenty of ordinary Americans hated the idea of all that wealth leaving the country and being squandered on wastrel British aristocrats. This wasn't what they'd fought a war of independence for. But Monkhouse argues that the moniker "dollar princesses" does the women a disservice. "I think it's a term that has been tossed around for a hundred years without very much thought, apart from in academic circles," she says. "The more that you delve into it, the more it falls apart. I think Consuelo Vanderbilt, though she doesn't call herself a dollar princess, sort of defined the genre in that she was a very rich American who was, not by her own choice, married for a title and then was unhappy." However, other women whose images are featured in the exhibition had very different stories. Daisy Leiter, glamorous and independent-minded daughter of a Chicago real estate magnate, was considered quite the catch and not just for her money, as Sargent's magnificent portrait shows. She was bombarded with proposals but married Henry Howard, the 19th Earl of Suffolk. It seems to have been a very happy love match and produced three sons. In later life, Daisy further exemplified the adventurous spirit of many of these women by becoming a helicopter pilot. Another of Sargent's subjects was Cora, Countess of Strafford. Her name is echoed by that of a famous fictional "dollar princess", Cora, Countess of Grantham, in Downton Abbey. Julian Fellowes has said that one of the inspirations for the series was a book about American heiresses called To Marry an English Lord. The real Cora was a Southern belle who married the 4th Earl of Strafford after the death of her first husband, toothpaste baron Samuel Colgate. The Earl died just five months after the wedding when he fell on to railway tracks at Potter's Bar. The incident prompted much gossip, as did the fact that Cora wore her coronet sideways at Edward VII's coronation. One of the best known of the women in the Heiress exhibition, represented in both an oil portrait and a charcoal drawing, is Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor, the daughter of a Virginian railway tycoon and the first woman to take her seat as an MP in the House of Commons. She had regular clashes with Winston Churchill, whose own mother, Jennie Jerome, was the daughter of a wealthy New York speculator and financier. There's a splash of politics in the new season of The Buccaneers that sees Nan realising that her elevated social status gives her power and influence, and beginning to wield it. Buccaneers showrunner Katherine Jakeways read extensively on the "dollar princesses" before writing began on the series, and she draws on their stories, as well as the Wharton text. "You imagine that the girls who came over were interesting to the men because (a) they were beautiful, (b) they were American and (c) they were rich, but actually what's really interesting is that (d) they were much better educated and much more encouraged to be confidently involved in society [than their English counterparts]," she tells the BBC. "In New York their opinions were sought whereas girls in England, as we show with Honoria in Season one, were asked not to speak or have an opinion." Like their real-life counterparts, the women in the show don't conform to reductive stereotypes. "Our characters are complicated and have depth, and we try to make all the relationships have some kind of resonance for a contemporary audience," says Jakeways. "And hopefully it's just really good fun." Season two is another rollercoaster ride that remixes all the successful ingredients from the first series. Will there be a season three? I'd bet an heiress's dowry on it. The Buccaneers Season Two premieres on Apple TV+ on 18 June. Heiress: Sargent's American Portraits is at Kenwood House, London, until 5 October. -- For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
The Guardian
32 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Everything that happened at Summer Game Fest 2025, from marathon game sessions to military helicopters
As protests exploded in Los Angeles last weekend, elsewhere in the city, a coterie of games journalists and developers were gathered together to play new games at the industry's annual summer showcase. This week's issue is a dispatch from our correspondent Alyssa Mercante. Summer Game Fest (SGF), the annual Los Angeles-based gaming festival/marketing marathon, was set up to compete with the once-massive E3. It's taken a few years, but now it has replaced it. 2025's event felt like a cogent reminder that the games industry has dramatically changed since the pandemic. Whereas E3 used to commandeer the city's convention centre smack in the middle of downtown LA, SGF is off the beaten path, nestled among the reams of fabric in the Fashion District, adjacent to Skid Row. There are fewer game companies present, it's not open to the public and there's no cosplay, unless it's for marketing purposes. Its centrepiece is a live show held at the YouTube theatre near the airport, hosted by ever-present games industry hype-man Geoff Keighley and streamed to millions – and you can buy tickets for that. Some video game enthusiasts and smaller content creators told me that the in-person showcase wasn't worth their money: just a very lengthy show that they could have watched online, culminating in a massive traffic jam to get out of Inglewood. This year's event had some hiccups, including an attempted gatecrasher, but felt the most put-together yet. Attending SGF is a privilege, but it is also an ungodly hybrid of a marathon and a sprint: back-to-back-to-back appointments with publishers and developers with no downtime in-between, speed walking between cabanas and moving swiftly in and out of over air-conditioned rooms to ensure you don't upset a PR person or accidentally spurn an indie developer. 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Placing plants around a cutesy little room afforded me a brief moment of zen in a crowded space full of people trying out dozens of indie games. Then there's Petal Runner, a pixel art RPG that looks and feels like a Game Boy-era Pokémon title. Published by iam8bit and developed by two people who met in the Instagram comments under some cyberpunk artwork, it's a beautiful, adorable, 'no violence' RPG. Rather than engage in the questionable practice of capturing cute creatures and forcing them to fight each other, you simply help deliver them to their new owners and 'calibrate' or calm them down through a series of old-school minigames. Then you hop on your motorcycle (Petal Runner's programmer was inspired to get a bike after watching Tron: Legacy) to deliver another pet. After just 15 minutes, its modern chip-tune soundtrack, cool-toned palette, and cute creatures had me sold. Thick As Thieves, meanwhile, is a multiplayer stealth game. 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And I played the new, four-person party game Lego Party with two other journalists, screaming as our Lego characters fell over each other during minigames or stole gold bricks in an attempt to get to first place. It was fun and freeing; people gathered around us as we yelled and guffawed and talked smack with gusto, as if we needed this game to help cleanse our tired palates. Every game I spent even a few minutes with this weekend was imbued with passion and creativity, no matter the size of the team or the scope of the project. It was a testament to the drive that fuels so many in this space, and the technological advancements that let smaller teams (sometimes just one or two people) make beautifully complex games. Seeing tons of fellow journalists and developers bright-eyed and excited, even with so many of us struggling to find work, recently laid off, or otherwise worried about the future, was a shot of adrenaline. But it was also impossible to ignore that something larger was taking place in LA, acting as a sombre backdrop to this comparatively low-stakes weekend of video games. On Saturday, protests broke out in Los Angeles, with citizens pushing back against the militant and cruel anti-immigration raids taking place across the city. The constant whir of helicopters was a bizarre soundtrack to the weekend; many people who had come from out of state or even out of the country were noticeably concerned about the escalating events. We furtively shared updates with each other at hands-on appointments, whispering about the national guard, warning each other to travel together and safely. On Sunday night, dozens of journalists and devs were told they couldn't leave a downtown LA bar where they had gathered; the LAPD had shut down the area, determined to quell the protests. On the last day of SGF, we chatted about how weird it was to preview video games during such an acute political moment. One person told me they were playing a demo that kicked off with tanks and military men and, as he played, he heard the sounds of a helicopter circling overhead, and wondered where the game ended and the real world began. Alyssa Mercante From the makers of Frostpunk and This War of Mine, The Alters is a strange sci-fi strategy experiment that sees stranded space-worker Jan cloning himself several times over in order to assemble a team big enough to make it off an exoplanet before the sun rises and burns everything to cinders. The thing is that the clones don't exactly get on. Each one represents a different alternate-universe version of Jan: imagine being stuck on a remote base with nothing but your squabbling selves. Sign up to Pushing Buttons Keza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gaming after newsletter promotion I thought The Alters was going to be a comedy game, but though it is sometimes fleetingly funny, it's also a surprisingly involving base-building survival affair, more tense and urgent-feeling than I was expecting and full of consequential choices that encourage a second or third run-through. I will certainly be playing more of it. Available on: PC, PlayStation 5, XboxApproximate playtime: 20-30 hours While Alyssa was on the ground at Summer Game Fest, Keith and I were watching an endless stream of showcases and trailers from the UK– we've picked out the most interesting games from the show. The biggest announcement was probably a new Xbox handheld – though, confusingly, it's not quite what it seems. The ROG Xbox Ally X (why can nobody at Microsoft name something properly?) is an Xbox branded version of an existing line of portable PCs. Still, Alyssa was impressed with how well it worked in her brief demo. We've also been extremely busy playing an inordinate amount of Nintendo's Switch 2. Keith's review of the console is here, and here's my review of its flagship game, Mario Kart World. Harassment by Ubisoft executives left female staff terrified, French court hears How Nintendo dodged Trump's tariffs and saved the Switch 2 release The Nintendo Switch 2 is out – here's everything you need to know No question for this week's guest issue but, as ever, if you've got something you'd like to ask, or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us on pushingbuttons@
Daily Mail
36 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Shocking moment British photographer films himself getting shot in the head by LA riot cops
Shocking footage has captured the moment LA police shot a British photographer in the head with a rubber bullet as the city was rocked by violent riots on Sunday evening. Father-of-two Toby Canham, who was on assignment for the New York Post, was filming videos of the chaos from an elevated level when a California Highway Patrol officer suddenly fired at him, leaving him with a severe head wound. Disturbing footage taken by Canham captured the moment he was struck in the forehead, which caused him to fall to the ground. 'F**k, f**k, I just got shot in the head!' the photographer can be heard screaming from behind the camera. Just moments before he was struck, Canham's video showed a police officer positioning himself behind a pillar. It is unclear why Canham was hit. The LA-based photographer, who had previously served for the British Army, was treated in hospital for whiplash and neck pain. Images show the bloody red wound he was left with on his forehead. Speaking about his harrowing ordeal, Canham said: 'When I got whacked, to my best recollection it was just me filming with my cameras on and then I got shot,' said Canham. 'Where I was hit, I was the only person overlooking the freeway. I wasn't surrounded so I was an easy target.' Seconds before he was hit with the rubber bullet, a flashbang initially exploded a few feet from him, causing shrapnel to kick up and leave two holes in his pants. Los Angeles is currently in its fifth day of protests against President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown. Demonstrations have spread to other cities nationwide, including Dallas and Austin, Texas, Chicago and New York, where a thousand people rallied and multiple arrests were made. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declared a local emergency and said a curfew will run from 8 p.m. Tuesday until 6 a.m. Wednesday. 'We reached a tipping point' after 23 businesses were looted, Bass said during a news conference. The curfew covers a 1 square mile section of downtown that includes the area where protests have occurred since Friday. Trump left open the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act, which authorizes the president to deploy military forces inside the U.S. to suppress rebellion or domestic violence or to enforce the law in certain situations. It's one of the most extreme emergency powers available to a U.S. president. The protests began Friday after federal immigration raids arrested dozens of workers in Los Angeles as part of his crackdown on immigration. Protesters blocked a major freeway and set cars on fire over the weekend, and police responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades. The demonstrations have been mostly concentrated downtown in the city of 4 million. Thousands of people have peacefully rallied outside City Hall and hundreds more protested outside a federal complex that includes a detention center where some immigrants are being held following workplace raids. Thousands of people have peacefully rallied outside City Hall and hundreds more protested outside a federal complex that includes a detention center where some immigrants are being held following workplace raids Despite the protests, immigration enforcement activity has continued throughout the county, with city leaders and community groups reporting ICE present at libraries, car washes and Home Depots. School graduations in Los Angeles have increased security over fears of ICE action and some have offered parents the option to watch on Zoom. McDonnell said that police had made 197 arrests on Tuesday, including 67 who were taken into custody for unlawfully occupying part of the 101 freeway. Several businesses were broken into Monday, though authorities didn't say if the looting was tied to the protests.
