Kevin Spacey is ready to make his “Hollywood comeback.”
The two-time Oscar-winning actor, 64, took to the stage for the first time since being acquitted of sexual assault charges in London in July.
The “House of Cards” alum performed a monologue at the Sheldonian Theatre, an architectural jewel inside the heart of the University of Oxford, from the play “Timon of Athens” written by William Shakespeare in the early 1600s.
Spacey was introduced to the audience by British author, political commentator and Post columnist Douglas Murray, who had just finished giving a lecture on the damaging effects of cancel culture in honor of the late Sir Roger Scruton, an English philosopher, writer and social critic who died in January 2020 at 75.
Scruton, a government housing adviser, wrongly lost his job in 2019 after he appeared to repeat antisemitic statements and denied Islamophobia was a problem during a magazine interview with the New Statesman.
“In an era of cancellation and defenestration, we sometimes forget that we both cannot go on like this and that we have been here before,” Murray said. “We know this because our greatest writers and artists have addressed this question in their own times. When Roger was going through his own battle with the shallows, I often thought of Shakespeare’s rarely performed but great play ‘Timon of Athens.’ Timon has the whole world before him. He is surrounded by friends and admirers. He is generous to all. Yet, he falls on hard times and when he does absolutely everybody deserts him. He is left with nothing and nobody, and risks being filled with despair and rage. It does not help that he is shadowed by the cynical philosopher Apemantus, who has warned him that just such a desertion might occur.”
“I adore this scene and should like to read it,” he said. “But I am not a professional actor. So, I would like to invite someone to the stage who is.”
Spacey, who recently saw his reputation take a hit after he was accused of committing sex offenses against four men between 2004 and 2013, may have felt a strange connection to the material about a man deserted by the masses in his time of need.
“Why dost thou seek me out,” began Spacey at the Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford’s St. Catherine’s College.
“Thou art a fool,” Spacey continued while swirling around a drink in his hand. “The icy precepts of respect, but follow’d. The sugar’d game before thee. But myself. Who had the world as my confectionary. The mouths, the tongues, the eyes and hearts of men. At duty, more than I could frame employment.
“Pride and wrath would confound thee and make thine own self the conquest of thy fury,” he continued. “Thou a bear, thou wouldst be killed by the horse, wert thou a horse, thou wouldst be seized by the
leopard, wert thou a leopard, thou wert german to the lion and the spots of thy kindred were jurors on thy life: all thy safety were remotion and thy defense absence. What beast couldst thou be, that were not subject to a beast? And what a beast art thou already, that seest not thy loss in transformation!”
Spacey concluded: “I am sick of this false world, and will love nought.”
Murray previously delved deeper into the relevance of the piece before making his introduction of the actor.
“By the last year of his life, Roger had finally been not just honored in his own country but given a position by a conservative government to advise on that most pressing of issues: how to try to build beautiful housing in a country desperately in need of housing and even more desperately in need of beautiful housing,” he recounted.
“Roger was engaged in his researches when a young snake of a man came to interview him and misrepresented what he had said. The fact that the magazine in question had been one Roger had contributed a column to for many years did not make this pill any easier to swallow,” Murray explained. “Roger was accused — falsely — of almost every one of the modern heresies, including racism against the Chinese. It was a preposterous set of allegations, and I for one knew them to be so from the outset.
“Yet the conservative government of the day — led by that great lady of iron principle, Theresa May — sacked Sir Roger before they had seen any more than a couple of tweets from the lying reporter,” he continued. “Conservative MPs and ministers called it a ‘no-brainer’ to fire Sir Roger and declared that Scruton was just so much dead weight on the party.”
Murray explained that he fought to get Scruton’s reputation restored. He eventually obtained a copy of the tape of the interview that “the New Statesman refused to hand over.” The quotes attributed to Roger were misrepresented and he was vindicated.
“But I remember that even at that point of victory, it felt like too little a victory,” Murray recalled. “Roger called me immediately after I published the true account of what had happened and said to me, ‘So, do you think I still have a career?’ There have not been many times in my life when I have wanted to cry with frustration, but that was one of them.”
Murray then asked the audience a series of questions regarding the validity of cancel culture.
“Can a society really survive, let alone do anything good or beautiful, if it is so willing to play these dirty, nasty games? Can any society seriously manage to do anything good if it is willing to throw away and discard people on mere hearsay? Can we get anywhere, let alone create anything, if we throw away our most talented figures with such ease? Can we honestly do anything of worth if people are kicking their feet in the shallows while trying to drown everyone engaged in anything of import in these puddles?
“It is not a straightforward question, but it is one which we would all do well to think on. Of course, like all great questions, it is one that people have thought on before,” he said. “I would like to say two things in closing. The first is that I learned a lesson during the period I defended Sir Roger and it is a lesson I should like to pass on, especially to the younger members of the audience here tonight.
“Always stand up for your friends,” Murray explained. “Especially when they are right. There is every reason to do so. Many of them are obvious, but one perhaps is not. It is this: It might be the best or only chance you get to show them how much they mean to you. If you do not seize this opportunity when it comes, you will save the truth of your feelings for their funeral or obituaries. Then, it is not much use to anyone. But if you defend a friend while they are alive, you might just give them the slightest intimation of how much you value them and love them — how much they mean to you and to others too.”
Spacey still faces 12 sex offense charges in the UK relating to alleged events between 2001 and 2013. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Earlier this month, he was rushed to a hospital in Uzbekistan after experiencing numbness in his arm and fearing a heart attack.
