Two-time Oscar winner and House of Cards star Kevin Spacey has come out of the closet as gay (an open secret in Hollywood)—but only after apologizing to actor Anthony Rapp for an alleged sexual advance that happened when Rapp was 14, several media outlets have reported.
Rapp—who plays Lt. Paul Stamets on the CBS online series Star Trek: Discovery, and who became a star in the Broadway production of Rent in the mid-1990s—initially told Buzzfeed that Spacey climbed on top of him in a bedroom at a 1986 party in New York.
Spacey issued an apology, on Twitter, saying he didn’t remember the incident, but ” If I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years.”
He added, “As those closest to me know, in my life I have had relationships with both men and women. I have loved and had romantic encounters with men throughout my life, and I choose now to live as a gay man. I want to deal with this honestly and openly and that starts with examining my own behavior.”
Many LBGTQs and allies immediately condemned Spacey on special media for trying to conflate the two separate issues—allegations of abuse of a minor with coming out as a gay man.