Oscar-winner Kevin Spacey was accused in a civil lawsuit on Wednesday of sexual assault and battery in the 1980s by actor Anthony Rapp and a second, unnamed person when both plaintiffs were about 14.

The suit was filed in New York state court in Manhattan.

Spacey did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He has largely retreated from public life after winning Oscars for the films "American Beauty" and "The Usual Suspects" and a Golden Globe for the TV political drama "House of Cards."

In an October 2017 interview with BuzzFeed, Rapp said Spacey had tried to seduce him in a 1986 incident.

Spacey in 2017 said he did not remember the encounter Rapp described but added, "If I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior."

Spacey, now 61, came out as gay in 2017.

Rapp, best known for starring in the Broadway musical "Rent," alleged in the lawsuit that Spacey "engaged in an unwanted sexual advance" with him when he was 14, during a party at Spacey's home in 1986.

The second person, identified only as C.D., alleged that he and Spacey had oral and anal sex and engaged in other sexual acts on several occasions in the early 1980s when the plaintiff was approximately 14 years old.

Both men are seeking unspecified damages for emotional distress.

Prosecutors in Massachusetts in 2019 dropped a criminal case in which Spacey was accused of sexually assaulting an 18 year-old man in a bar in 2016.

Spacey had pleaded not guilty to the charges of felony indecent assault and battery. The case was dropped after the alleged victim declined to testify.

 

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant and Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Howard Goller)