LONDON – Kevin Spacey denied that grabbing males by the crotch was his “trademark” pickup transfer as he turned testy below questioning Friday by the prosecutor at his sexual assault trial in a London courtroom.

In a heated alternate that required intervention by the decide, Spacey was requested about allegations he aggressively grabbed a person backstage at a charity occasion in a theater.

“Absolute bollocks!” Spacey replied to titters from the gallery within the packed courtroom.

“Yes, because that’s exactly where you did grab him, isn’t it?” Prosecutor Christine Agnew snapped again.

“Really?” Spacey said as he looked up in disbelief at Justice Mark Wall. “Did he accuse me of grabbing his bollocks?”

Somebody stated, “Yes,” and Wall informed him to reply the prosecutor’s query.

“I did not,” Spacey said.

The two-time Oscar winner stuck to his testimony from a day earlier in which he insisted he never sexually assaulted three of the four accusers who described disturbing encounters between 2001 and 2013. The acts allegedly escalated from unwanted touching to aggressive fondling to one instance of performing oral sex act on an unconscious man.

He dismissed one man’s fondling claims as “pure fantasy” and said he shared consensual encounters with two others who later regretted it. He accepted the claims of a fourth man, saying he had made a “clumsy pass” throughout an evening of heavy ingesting, however he took exception to the “crotch-grabbing” characterization.

Spacey was irritable at moments and laughed off different questions in his ultimate likelihood to win over jurors in a case that would have an effect on whether or not he is capable of make a comeback after sexual misconduct accusations derailed his once-stellar profession.

The 63-year-old American, who’s recognized in courtroom by his full identify, Kevin Spacey Fowler, has pleaded not responsible to a dozen fees that embrace sexual and indecent assault counts and one depend of inflicting an individual to have interaction in penetrative sexual exercise with out consent. He may face a jail time period if convicted.

Spacey not often checked out Agnew as the 2 sparred, directing his gaze on the jury in Southwark Crown Courtroom however with out his glasses on. She pressed him on every of the allegations, asserting that the lads who testified towards him had been telling the reality and Spacey insisting they lied.

Agnew stated Spacey was not simply the “big flirt” he claimed to be but in addition a “big sexual bully.”

“That’s your term,” Spacey countered.

Agnew instructed Spacey had been turned on sitting subsequent to a person in a theater throughout a rehearsal for a charity occasion. She stated he determined to “go for it” later when he grabbed the genitals of a person backstage who described Spacey’s hand as being like a placing cobra.

“You’re just making stuff up now,” Spacey stated.

When requested why the person would lie, Spacey stated: “Money, money and then money.”

That man and one different have filed lawsuits towards him.

Spacey stated that being a celeb would have made it straightforward to have “sex all the time” however he discovered it exhausting to belief individuals and that led to intervals of loneliness.

“Did you then reach out to people sexually in order to ease that burden?” Agnew requested.

“Welcome to life,” Spacey replied. “Yes, yes I did.”

Spacey stated he had been promiscuous at instances, including: “It doesn’t make me a bad person.”

If he was hooking up with somebody, he stated reaching for his or her groin can be an inappropriate first transfer.

He objected to the time period “crotch-grabbing” to explain what he had executed within the occasion when he stated he misinterpret the indicators from a person he had met at a pub.

“I would say in my estimate it is not a grab, not a grope,” he stated of what he had executed. “It is a gentle touch.”

“The fact of the matter is, Mr. Spacey Fowler, that this is your MO,” Agnew said bluntly.

The alleged victims all said they only came forward after allegations against Spacey surfaced in the United States in 2017 as the #MeToo movement gained momentum.

Agnew said Spacey had taken advantage of his powerful status as “essentially the golden boy of the London theater scene” and knew that his victims weren’t more likely to converse up towards him.

Spacey stated he had solely used his place to revive the Previous Vic Theatre, the place he served as inventive director for a decade, to its former glory.

“I didn’t have a power wand that I waved in front of people’s faces whenever I wanted someone to go to bed with me,” he stated.

When requested about essentially the most critical cost he faces, based mostly on allegations he carried out oral intercourse on an aspiring actor who had fallen asleep or handed out on his couch, Agnew challenged Spacey’s account that the encounter had been consensual and romantic.

She questioned Spacey’s clarification that he phoned the person out of concern after he hurried out of his condominium. Agnew instructed the person was, the truth is, unconscious when the decision was made, indicating it was mistake or a pocket dial.

“That’s your theory,” Spacey stated.

“That is the prosecution case,” Agnew replied.

“And it’s a weak one!” he retorted.

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