‘He's human, not a criminal': Inside Kevin Spacey's Cannes comeback

Telegraph

21-05-2025

At around 7.50pm yesterday in Cannes, an enormous seven-tiered white cake wobbled its way out of the Carlton Hotel and across the Boulevard de la Croisette. Five feet in height and more than three in diameter, it was borne along by three male chefs in pristine kitchen whites, and shepherded by a waistcoated member of staff across four lanes of traffic, down the wooden steps of the hotel's beach club and into its kitchen.
'See that?' said one man queuing outside the club in evening dress to his companion, pointing at the confection. 'I wonder if Kevin's going to jump out of it.'
Yes – how would Mr Spacey make his appearance at this most glamorous of film festivals? For most stars, the arrivals procedure is simple and direct. One is driven in a black air-conditioned car to the foot of the Palais des Festivals red carpet, where one presents oneself to a living wall of lenses while flashing one's best Riviera grin to the plebs. But for the 65-year-old actor – who had three films, The Usual Suspects, Looking for Richard and LA Confidential, premiere at the festival in the 1990s – a more tangential approach is now required.
Hence his presence at Tuesday night's gala dinner hosted by the Better World Fund, a black-tie charity event unaffiliated with the festival itself. At the champagne reception, the vibe was less Hollywood glamour than Euro-socialite pizazz: a swirling sea of pursed lips, lacquered complexions, swept-back silver hair and cantilevered bosoms.
They had assembled, the organisation's president and founder Manuel Collas de la Roche explained, 'to achieve extraordinary change by implementing concrete solutions to tomorrow's challenges'. Quite how boozing it up on the Côte d'Azur brings this plan to fruition is anyone's guess, though the Fund has been around for 10 years and has received support in the past from stars as lofty as Leonardo DiCaprio, who is pictured in the programme with three Brazilians in indigenous robes and headdresses, as proof of the whole enterprise's humanitarian credentials.
Women's empowerment is a priority, as is the welfare of youngsters in the third world. 'Please, for the children!' the auctioneers regularly beseeched the crowd during a sale of dresses, artworks, a five-day detox at a clinic in Montreux, a 'transformative wellbeing and anti-ageing journey' in Geneva and other such lots which collectively raised €92,000.
Spacey was technically there to be presented with an award which, according to the programme, honours remarkable individuals who have 'engaged, inspired and mobilised for a cause'. (Previous recipients include the UAE princeling Sheikh Ahmed Bin Faisal Al Qassimi, Dominique Ouattara, the First Lady of the Ivory Coast, and Sharon Stone.)
The main cause being mobilised for last night, however, was clearly Spacey's comeback, which the actor has been doggedly pursuing since the British high-profile criminal trial in which he was acquitted of sexual abuse in 2023. A handful of roles in smaller films have been obtained (last night he described the forthcoming revolutionary-era thriller 1780 'one of the most exciting and fulfilling films I have ever made'), though Hollywood has been thus far unreceptive. He may have been cleared of the charges, but the taint of his #MeToo reckoning, along with the persistent stories of inappropriate behaviour over the years (Spacey himself has conceded he was a 'big flirt' who made 'clumsy passes'), still loom large.
Even the role currently billed as his highest-profile in years doesn't seem especially high-profile. Before he took to the stage at the Better World Gala, a trailer played for The Awakening, a forthcoming independently made conspiracy action thriller starring Alice Eve and Peter Stormare, in which Spacey plays the villain. But judging by the trailer, his screen time appears to be brief: of the three shots of Spacey it contained, two appeared to be the same one.
Around the main festival campus earlier that day, delegates were sceptical that Spacey could use this award to leverage a return to mainstream movie-making. 'Yes, he was found innocent,' said one buyer for a British distributor, who had declined to watch The Awakening at the sprawling Cannes Market, where international release deals are struck.
'So it's absolutely fair that he should be looking for work again, and it's down to the individual consciences of other actors and filmmakers as to whether he finds it. But is it a good look for him to be lording it up and collecting dubious awards at this point? Arguably no.'
At the Better World Gala that evening, however, the mood was more supportive. 'Kevin is one of Hollywood's greatest stars,' said one attendee, a glamorous woman who described her line of work as philanthropist and entrepreneur. 'It is ridiculous that this industry he has done so much for would deny the world more of his great performances.'
Others agreed. 'Show me anyone in this room who has been nothing but a saint in their personal life,' added a French-accented man in global entertainment management. 'Kevin is human but he is not a criminal, and I'm sure a much nicer man than many of his peers. For him to be frozen out is nothing more than' – a dramatic pause and a sniff – ' le wokisme.'
Kevin Spacey compares his blacklisting from the film industry to that of screenwriter Dalton Trumbo in a fiery speech at #Cannes. pic.twitter.com/DLXXvuzi3d
— Variety (@Variety) May 20, 2025
In these fringier circles, where mainstream and new media hold less sway, the former Lex Luthor is far from social kryptonite.
Indeed, the going rate for a place at the Better World Gala – which entailed a beachside reception, three-course dinner, charity auction, and the possibility of an encounter with Spacey himself – was between €2,400 and €6,000 per head, with tables and VIP packages significantly more. When Spacey arrived at 8.25pm prompt, it was without much ceremony: the cake remained in the kitchen, intact. He and a small entourage swept onto the red carpet for a brief but busy photo call – ' Bonsoir Keveen! Monsieur Spacee! Zztrait ahead please!' – before he and his team were chaperoned into the main marquee, while guests drained the last of the fizz.
Eyes bright, hair styled in a vaguely Trumpian bouffant, his smile was hard to read: clenched in the flesh yet natural in the photographs that almost immediately began to circulate on Instagram. In the room he was friendly to selfie-hunters, and even came to the stage during the charity auction to gee up the crowd when bidding was slow. (Someone then spent €28,000 on a red bass guitar signed by Sting: Spacey gave them a standing ovation.) When the time came for his award, though, the velvet glove was removed and a steelier Spacey emerged – the one familiar from his performance on Netflix's House of Cards as Frank Underwood, the fictional US president whose dramatic fall from grace ran in queasy parallel to Spacey's own.
'Who would have ever thought that honouring someone who has been exonerated in every single courtroom he's ever walked into would be thought of as a brave idea?' he began. 'But here we are.'
He drew parallels between his plight and that of the screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, the best-known victim of Hollywood's anti-communist purge in the 1940s and 50s. He quoted Kirk Douglas and sung Elton John. When he spoke about the loyalty and friendship of Evan Lowenstein – his manager since 2016, just before the allegations against him surfaced – his voice cracked with emotion. But then again, a two-time Oscar-winner's might well do.
Spacey in his current form presents a problem to Hollywood, and from the content of last night's speech, one senses he knows it. He clearly has no intention of politely disappearing, and his exoneration in court leaves the industry open to charges of hypocrisy and cowardice: if he's innocent, and (per their own awards ceremonies) talented, the argument runs, why shouldn't his career resume where it left off? Because that's not how cinema works, the counter-argument explains: the art form's essence is images, and Spacey's has changed.
Can he change it back? Even in the less pietistic Europe, he may have just missed his chance. Day one of this year's festival brought the news that Gerard Depardieu, a former Cannes Best Actor winner and jury president, had been found guilty of sexually assaulting two women, for which he received an 18-month suspended sentence.
The French film industry has been notably more reluctant to react to #MeToo than their counterparts in the United States. Art and artists were still considered separate enough here that Cannes felt able to open with a new Johnny Depp film in 2023, shortly after the conclusion of his high-profile defamation case against his ex-wife Amber Heard. (As with Spacey, the verdict was in Depp's favour.) Last year, attendees were on tenterhooks for a #MoiAussi moment, as rumours whirled that the French press was preparing a damning exposé on multiple actors and producers. But the gossip fizzled out, and the story – if it ever existed – went unpublished.
Yet Depardieu's fall felt like an omen: and sure enough, a day later, Cannes banned another French actor from walking the red carpet over accusations made against him by three ex-partners which are the subject of a coming civil lawsuit.
Musing on the Depardieu ruling, this year's jury president, the actress Juliette Binoche, described the actor as a ' monstre sacré ', or sacred monster: the French term for national treasure, but with a menacing edge. Perhaps since Depardieu was no longer engaged in the sacred business of artistic creation, Binoche suggested, his monstrous aspect had faded too: now he was just a man, and therefore ripe for the toppling. Spacey has, of course, been convicted of nothing, but his own sacred monster status has been hanging in the balance for a while. No wonder he seized the opportunity.